Arms Wide Open

by Patricia Harman

  For a moment, I’m furious. How long have they been resting here while I ran frantically through the woods? Then I see Stacy’s face, wet with tears.

  “We just got home,” he offers, pulling me down next to them. “I found Mica in the Olsens’ kitchen. He followed the trail all by himself.”

  “That’s over a mile!” I reach over Stacy’s legs and give our two-year-old a fierce hug. “You scared Stacy and Patsy. Don’t ever go away from us again, OK?”

  “I told him,” Stacy assures, taking my hand.

  “Ila gives me cookies,” Mica tries to make clear, his blue eyes serious because he knows he’s caused us real pain. Our little boy’s gaze shifts to and fro, willing us to understand. Then the three of us lie back in the hot sun on the bank of the Lester, listening to the river bubble its way to Lake Superior. Fear has diminished me, and all that’s left is the high wind moving the clouds.

  Roots

  Lately the melancholy flute music is in my head all the time. I’m curled on the window seat, watching Stacy and Mica cook. Stacy is such a wonderful father. He carefully shows his son how to measure brown rice, demonstrates by holding the glass measuring cup up to the light and pointing to the red line. He has Mica add salt and stir the grain in the cast-iron cook pot. Outside the kitchen window, dark clouds have come in.

  I gaze at the warm walls of this sturdy log structure, the straight grain of the yellow poplar, the white caulking that keeps out the cold, and wonder what’s wrong with me. Stacy and I have been to couples’ counseling in Duluth a few times, trying to figure things out, but it’s getting us nowhere. The more I talk, the more I appall myself. I don’t know what I want and I want everything . . . I have a good man, a secure home, and a beautiful son. What else could there be, communion with saints?

  In the afternoon as we harvest potatoes out in the field, this time with Mica secure in his baby carrier, propped in the dirt by our side, I try again to explain my feelings to Stacy. “I know that what we’re doing on the land is part of learning to live nonviolently, learning to live sustainably, but while we’re out here grubbing around in nature, the war goes on, bloodier than before, people live in poverty, kids are abused . . .”

  Stacy turns the soil with his spade but doesn’t say anything. He flips over the soil, exposing the brown globes of sweet carbohydrates. I know he’s thinking, She wants to leave again. She wants to go searching for the Garden of Eden.

  I throw my long braids over my shoulder to keep them from dragging in the dirt and crawl behind him, picking out the potatoes with my bare hands and tossing them on a tarp.

  “So, what are you saying?” Stacy finally responds.

  I take a deep breath. “I don’t know . . . maybe we should leave the homestead, just for this winter, hitchhike to California and join the grape boycott or maybe go down to Tennessee, check out Ina May and Steven Gaskins’ farm . . . They have midwives there that do homebirths. See where life takes us.”

  Stacy stomps hard on his spade, bites the inside of his cheek, turns the earth over, then steps hard again. “The grape boycott is practically over, Patsy. Anyway, we moved four times in the last few years. I’m tired of it. Every time we settle, you find something wrong and want to move on. It means a lot to me to wake up each morning in the same bed with the sun shining into our cabin at the same angle every day, to see the seasons change in the same way each year. We’re just starting to get the garden in shape. I’ve taken root here.”

  I let out a long sigh. I know he’s right. Wherever we’ve landed, when we pack up again, it’s always my idea. We have a baby together. If he won’t leave, then I must stay.

  CHAPTER 14

  Vision

  First snow! Though I dread the hardship and isolation of a long winter, I can’t help it; I’m excited. Stacy loves the snow, too. We run up to the big clearing and throw our arms wide, raise our bare hands to the huge white clusters. “Yippee!” I whirl around. Stacy dances a jig and I love this wild man with all my heart. By afternoon the flurry has turned to sleet and we realize this is serious weather.

  Night comes. We’re tired, unprepared for the cold again, and confronted with six months of winter. The unseasonable warmth fooled us once more. We should have brought in a supply of dry wood and covered the woodpile with the tarp, but now most of the maple and oak rounds, stacked against the house, are soggy and wet.

  After a quick supper of peanut butter sandwiches on homemade whole-wheat bread, Stacy builds up the fire in the heater stove and takes Mica, who’s having a meltdown, directly to bed. Outside, wet snow comes in at an angle and sticks to the stout poplar logs.

  Peace I ask of thee, oh river, Stacy sings upstairs, trying to quiet Mica’s tears. Peace. Peace. Peace . . . When I learn to live serenely, cares will cease.

  That’s my problem; I don’t know how to live serenely. Nothing’s ever good enough, or what seems perfect at first, sours, like Chester Creek House, like this homestead. I glance out the window at the frosting covering each branch and twig. Though the hour is early, father and son fall asleep in our big bed.

  The kettle is whistling, so I make myself a cup of hand-gathered peppermint tea and take a chair where I can look out as day turns to dusk, and white, like a blanket, covers everything. The room darkens, but I don’t light the lamp. This will be our second winter on the farm, and our future seems as bleak as the nation’s hope for peace. Though at the teach-in I made a convincing attempt to explain simple living as the land-based arm of the revolution, I have my doubts.

  There’s nothing I love more than floating on my back in the Lester River, my arms stretched out, looking up at the dragonflies glinting metallic-green in the forest light, but what I recall, when I think of my life here, is the intense labor it takes just to survive, from sunup to sundown. Stacy thrives living this way, but I’m not sure this is all I want to do.

  Trouble is . . . I don’t know what else . . . Teach childbirth classes, maybe, but that’s hardly a full-time living, and what about our other goals, trying to live sustainably on the earth, protesting the war, building a new society?

  Outside, in the Christmas-card world, snow hangs on every drooping balsam limb, covers rock and tree and stump. I cherish this land, the clearing around the garden, the snake-like path to the spring, the Lester River as it rushes, golden in the sunset, past our home.

  I revere every hand-hewed square log in this beautiful cabin, Mica’s toy chest painted with blue birds, the window seat with its quilted cover, even the old cast-iron cookstove. It’s the way I’ve always wanted to live . . . or thought I did.

  Most of all, I love the dream, the dream of this homestead being a safe haven, a place to raise children with the man I love as we learn to live gently on the earth.

  And what about Mica? Mica our cub, sleeping upstairs, with his father’s strong arms around him. What about Mica? How could I leave?

  The room’s getting chilly, but movement outside the window draws my eyes to the balsam trees. The wet flakes come down so thick it’s hard to see. I lean toward the glass, then freeze, my cup halfway to my mouth. Like a black-and-white photo developing in a chemical tray, the shadow slowly materializes. A large, dark, hairy animal sits under a tree. Our eyes lock. I could wake Stacy to come down and see, but this is personal. It’s Fucker, the bear I’d chased down the path last spring. Maybe he’s my totem spirit.

  “So,” I whisper. The bear cocks his head. “What should I do? Go? Stay? Take Mica on the road with me? Join up with Colin, Kaitlin, Mara, and Tom? Leave Stacy alone on the homestead without his boy? How can I do that? I’m a lost soul.” The lump of dark fur holds my gaze and tears fall into my peppermint tea. “I don’t know what to do . . . I don’t know.” The bear rubs his back against the trunk, up and down, side to side, as if absently itching a sore spot.

  I lay down my mug, expecting the movement to scare the animal a
way, but it doesn’t.

  “It will be cold here soon. Shouldn’t you be hibernating? Is that what I’m supposed to do, too? Stay here another year, holed up in this log cabin, hiding away?” I think of the isolation, the deep snow, the broken snowshoes, the wet wood, the forty-below nights, the freezing hands.

  I can see no way to create community on this isolated homestead. Who else would want to live this way? And Stacy won’t abandon the land. He’s put down roots. These eighty acres of earth make him happy, give him peace. The bear swings his head, snuffs the white that covers the ground. This may be the last time I’ll see him.

  Upstairs, Stacy stirs in his sleep. I glance at the beamed ceiling, picturing his arms wrapped around Mica. Peace. Peace. Peace. The tears start again. When I look back at the balsam grove, the bear’s gone.

  Gift

  Incense and patchouli oil. Rows of green and blue lava lamps. Feathered roach clips and psychedelic posters with peace signs. I’m leaning over the antique counter of the Head Shop on Fourth Street in Duluth, fanning out my macramé necklaces and beaded amulets on the glass surface. A long-haired male clerk, wearing jeans and a white embroidered muslin shirt, bends over the counter, helping me put prices on the necklaces. “If they all sell,” he says, “you’ll get forty dollars.”

  Like Silas Marner, I add up the coins in my mind. Forty dollars plus the birthday money that my mom sent will buy a bus ticket south.

  “These are beautiful,” the clerk goes on in his gentle voice. It’s Johan. “They should go fast. We’ll hang them on the rack near the register.” He pushes his shoulder-length hair behind his ears and leans his elbows on the countertop. His long, lean body, so different from Stacy’s solid, muscular one, stretches next to me.

  “You doin’ OK?” He places his hand over mine. I go very still. His tenderness overwhelms me and tears start to form, not falling yet, just hanging there.

  I shake my head no but answer, “I’m fine.” I want him to hold me.

  The brass bells on the glass door shatter and cold air comes in. “Hi, babe,” bubbles a wispy Tinker Bell. She’s Johan’s new lover, I’m sure of it, the self-assured way she enters the shop. She doesn’t say hello, just flutters to the back, with three cloth bags of food from the co-op, and pushes through the beaded curtain.

  “Gotta go,” Johan whispers. Then louder, in his shopkeeper’s voice, “We’ll take the usual ten percent commission, but you’ll come out fine. I can mail the check when your necklaces sell or give you cash, next time you come in.”

  Tinker Bell calls, “Honey? Can you help me put the food away?”

  “Thanks,” I say, meaning more than just, “Thanks for selling my beaded necklaces.”

  Thanks for caring. Thanks for loving me once. The moon and stars were the gift you gave.

  Like a dashing English pilot, I throw my long rainbow scarf around my neck, zip up my parka, and turn toward the door just as three teens in fringed suede jackets push their way in.

  “See you.” I glance back, wanting to touch Johan’s hand once more, but the moment is gone. For a second, he holds my eyes, blue into blue, like rain falling into Lake Superior. Then the door shuts behind me, the brass bells jingle again, and he’s gone.

  Pilgrim

  Sunshine and crisp shadows on old snow. The sound of water dripping everywhere. Winter has temporarily released us, but she will be back again with a heavy boot, to settle her score.

  I’m waiting in a wooden shelter for the Sky Line bus that will take us to Jody’s new apartment. She and baby Hawk have moved into town. Frog left his shack on Zimmerman for the winter and went down to Minneapolis to work as a roadie for a new Twin Cities rock band.

  Tattered political posters flip in the breeze on the back of a nearby phone booth, signs that remind me of the results of the election, and I stand up and rip Nixon’s picture down. Not that it will do any good. He won by a landslide and we have four more years of his face to look forward to.

  “Come on, Mica. Here’s our ride.” We stand on the curb and wave to the green city bus that pulls up in the puddle in front of us.

  “Hi,” Mica greets the driver, holding out his hand for a lift up, and we find seats in the front.

  I finger the crumpled note in my pocket. In his cramped script, our friend Colin has summoned Stacy and me to meet him at the Ohio Peacemakers conference in January. Mara and Kaitlin, Tristan and Tom will be there, along with Tristan’s wife, Annie, and some other folks we haven’t met from Cincinnati. They’re going to discuss forming a new intentional community.

  Stacy says he’s not going. What would be the point, anyway? He doesn’t plan to desert the land. We’ve come to a standoff. My lover won’t consider leaving and I can’t envision staying another desolate winter in this Siberian wilderness. That’s how I think of the homestead now, as if I’ve been sentenced to another dark season in the bleak gulag of the North.

  My concern is mostly for Mica. Stacy will manage, at least physically, if I leave. He assures me he will, anyway, but would I be breaking his heart? How would I know? His true heart’s like the center of a maple tree, full of sweetness, but hard to tap.

  “I don’t want you to stay unless you choose to, Patsy,” he tells me. “You aren’t a prisoner here. You’ll poison this place if you stay without loving it. This way of life brings me joy.”

  And what about Mica? If I take my boy on the road with me, I won’t know from night to night where I’ll sleep. I won’t know where I’m going until I get there. I won’t know what I’ll find until I know what I’m looking for. What kind of life is that for a little kid?

  Some would say, “Get on with it girl! Quit the whining and self-recrimination.” But those people aren’t mothers. Those people aren’t in love with Stacy. I lie shattered at the bottom of a long mining shaft, covered by rubble. I can’t see light, not even a pinpoint.

  “Sky Line and Eighth,” shouts the driver. This is our stop. Mica and I jump down the steps and trudge through three blocks of slush toward Jody’s apartment. The wet snow glitters in the bright afternoon light, but I see none of this. Something massive is shifting, like a glacier sliding over the land.

  Dance

  A man knocks hard on the bathroom door, rattling the handle. “Come on!” he growls. “The rest of us want showers, too. You’re using up all the hot water!” I push my forehead against Jody’s slimy shower wall.

  In the living room, I can hear Mica telling Jody and Hawk a story about the fox we saw this morning on our way across Jacobsen’s field. My little prince . . .

  Cat Stevens sings on the stereo, “Morning Has Broken,” and the warm iron-tinged water pours down on my face, mixes with my tears. I’ve been standing in the shower for thirty-five minutes.

  “What the fuck!” snarls the deep voice. “Are you coming out, or do I have to come in and get you?” I choke back my sobs.

  “Just a few more minutes.” The sound of the shower, a little Niagara, muffles my tears. If I walk away, our beautiful wilderness farm and the shining Lester River will be lost to me. For more than two years I have tramped every inch of that piece of earth. It is my earth. I belong there.

  “You all right?” Jody questions, sticking her blond head through the door into the steam.

  “Just a few more minutes,” I repeat my mantra. Something is splitting open inside me, like a baby trying to get born.

  Adjusting the shower, I rinse my long hair; turn the temperature to cold and then scalding again. I can hit the road or stay at the farm, but I can’t stay in this shower forever. I twist off the spigot.

  It is over. After seven years with Stacy, it is over, our love, our travels, our fading dream of building a new world together. There’s no telling what will become of us . . . but next week, or maybe the week after, I’ll use my small stash, take the Greyhound bus south alone, and meet up with
Colin and Mara. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone or when I’ll be back.

  Maybe I’ll find another farm as beautiful as our homestead, with people who aspire to a better world, men and women who will revere the land and work for peace. In time, maybe I can persuade Stacy to join and he and Mica and I can be together again. This is my hope, a tiny embryo of hope.

  I wrap a large white towel around my damp body and step into a narrow hall that smells like marijuana and baking bread. “It’s all yours,” I say to the scowling bearded guy leaning against the wall.

  In the living room, Mica runs up to me, grabs my legs, and unintentionally pulls my towel down. “Tell Jody about the fox, Patsy. Tell her about the fox we saw!”

  “Whoops,” I laugh as I lift him against me.

  I’m naked and damp, standing in a room full of hippies, while President Nixon blabs on a silenced TV, Tricky Dick, telling lies again. No one looks at the commander in chief or at me, either.

  You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while. Two ponytailed guys and Jody are slumped on the sofa, harmonizing with Cat Stevens and passing a joint back and forth. A sheet of snow roars off the roof. Nude, I swirl Mica around to the music, his arms flung wide. Around and around . . .

  We dance until we are dizzy.

  FROM THE GREEN JOURNAL

  COMMUNE ON THE RIDGE

  1977–1978

  Fall

  CHAPTER 1

  Decision

  “Listen, Gracie, and Simon, this isn’t false labor. You’re leaking fluid and the baby’s a month early.” I take off my exam gloves and roll them inside out.

  I’m sitting on a white chenille spread on a sagging metal bedstead, in the bedroom of a farmhouse sixty miles from our communal farm in West Virginia, one hour, on dirt roads, from the closest hospital. Contractions are moderate and five minutes apart. The patient is six centimeters dilated.