Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle

by Peter Coyote

  Pursuing this goal, I met a handsome young speculator I will call Angus. My old pal Cadillac Ron, business manager for the Grateful Dead, introduced us and told me that Angus had, that very year, made more money speculating in oil than anyone else in the world, and he wanted to “do things” with it. Angus had some interesting theories. He believed that the Scots and the Jews were the two most successful “races” on the planet. (I didn’t remind him that Judaism was a religion, since even I was bright enough to understand that it might be better not to argue with someone you hoped to separate from some money.) He had done a great deal of “original anthropological research” to prove that the Scots were actually the lost tribe of the Jews and could speak for hours, quoting arcane authorities, tracing, if I understood it correctly, the hegira of “your people” from Judea to Glasgow.

  Because he was a Scot, he explained, he had quite consciously taken a Jewish wife to mingle their genes, and he expected superchildren from the union.

  I winced inwardly for the children as Angus and I strolled around Battery Park “creating a relationship,” which primarily consisted of me listening patiently to his theories, under the impression that if he was crazy enough to believe in a Scottish-Jewish superrace, he might believe in automated truck locks.

  As we walked one day and as I, by my grave demeanor and judicious questions, tried to convince Angus of my intelligence and substance, we passed three derelicts clustered around a Sabrett’s hot-dog cart. Suddenly the most scrofulous of the three peeled himself away from his comrades and approached, calling, “Pierre! Oh, Pierre. Coyote-man!” My blood chilled when I realized that it was Gregory Corso, Beat poet, old friend, and drug comrade, toothless, filthy, and bug-eyed, lurching toward us with his forefinger raised.

  Angus recoiled as if someone had passed a skunk’s ass under his nose, but to his credit, he stood his ground. Thinking quickly, I made a rather formal introduction of “Mr. Corso, one of America’s foremost poets,” to “Mr. ____, one of the nation’s foremost financiers and developers,” implying to Angus by my exaggerated civility toward Gregory that I was a patron of the arts, hardly an intimate, who might have met this eccentric artiste at a charity fund-raiser. I tried to walk on, figuring I’d square it with Gregory later, but he followed me, rambling on piteously about having been stoned on bad heroin the night before, then mugged, and now how sick he was. Angus looked as if he were afraid Corso might puke on his shoes and began to manifest an exaggerated interest in the Hudson River, while I, with a combination of head jerks and glares, tried to wise Gregory to my now-endangered hustle.

  Corso, who kept referring to me as “Coyote-man,” needed a bus ticket to Buffalo so he could perform at a contracted poetry reading. “It’s only fifty bucks,” he said, eyeing my suit pointedly. What could I say? I was dressed to impress and couldn’t confide that I only made sixty dollars a week without blowing my cover—so I gave him the money with what I hope passed for sangfroid.

  Angus and I continued our walk, only now I was doing all the talking, explaining Gregory’s importance to American letters much too enthusiastically. Angus’s manners were perfect, but the spell had been broken. Maybe it was the “Coyote-man.” I never heard from him again.

  On Thursday afternoons I reversed Monday’s migration and caught the bus for Portland, Pennsylvania. Arriving around 4:30 in the afternoon, I would change into my work clothes and “Coyote” consciousness and be laboring at farm chores before my psyche had a moment to shift gears. This switching occurred so seamlessly that one day I was driving to the fields in the farm Jeep when, observing myself in coveralls and work boots, I became severely disoriented. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing—the classic actor’s nightmare of being onstage as the curtain rises on a full house and having no idea what the play is or how you arrived there. Only this was not a dream. It was my life. I pulled over and sat in stunned confusion until my interior reality caught up with my location. I was going crazy.

  My two worlds were becoming increasingly divergent and incomprehensibly difficult. Sometime in the summer of 1972, Sam invited a favorite girlfriend of mine, Nichole Wills, to join us. Most women would not arrive at the conclusion that integrating a nubile, sexually guiltless young woman into a troubled marriage would be an efficacious way to preserve it. But Sam’s personal power rests on her absolute fidelity to impulse; in this regard, she behaves like a fine actress, moving from moment to moment with total commitment. There was, however, no playwright behind the scenes, integrating these moments into coherent form and governing their consequences.

  Sam had been corresponding secretly with Nichole, entreating her to come because “it would make Peter happy.” From her correspondence, Sam was aware that Nichole had become addicted to heroin and was anxious to leave the temptations of the West Coast. She did not share this information with anyone else, however. Sam was flighty but far from stupid; I suspect that the disintegration of our relationship panicked her, and her panic provoked a momentary vision of relief—an image in which I would be doled out maintenance doses of sanctioned sex and would consequently be grateful to and less critical of her. Sam explains her reasoning in this way: “I just said to myself, ‘Look, Peter’s been wanting another wife for a long time. Let’s just get this over with.’ I thought, ‘Well, if I have a hand in this, maybe it can be done . . . in some kind of way that I can handle.’ ”

  So one sunny day Nichole appeared with her curly-haired, wise-eyed two-and-a-half-year-old son Jeremiah. Nichole was as radiant and charming as ever, and we established them in the attic room. There was no word about addiction nor mention of any problems at all. Even years later, with the claws of a ravaging, full-blown addiction sunk in the back of her neck, Nichole’s voice over the phone was invariably cheerful and upbeat, her good humor glib and bullet-proof. For Nichole, withholdings like this are not precisely lying. Years later, her sister revealed the psychosexual nightmare of Nichole’s childhood, and it became apparent to me that she existed in a world of absolute denial.

  Up to now, my relationship with Nichole had consisted of little more than chance encounters that blossomed into amorous interludes with affectionate partings, without demands or expectations. After fantasy-like frolics with Nichole, the real-life demands of lovers and mothers felt like returning to gravity after a year on the moon.

  With hindsight, it’s easy to see that what appeared to be free offerings of her body were never really free for Nichole. The desire in a man’s eyes and his attentions implied that she was worth something—at least his attention. This was the flimsy prophylactic that protected her from too-naked contact with her virulent psyche. When circumstances breached these pitiful defenses, her inner life felt like being skinless in a sandstorm. Stronger medicines were called for, prayed for, and found. I don’t blame myself unduly for failing to see past the illusion of her charming surface. Beauty is its own amoral compulsion, and Nichole’s sincerity and charm made calculation and suspicion heretical.

  But her grim future was not even superficially evident the day she arrived at Turkey Ridge. Nichole’s personal problems, like everyone else’s, ticked away like naval mines in deep seas, awaiting opportune targets.

  More of the Free Family appeared. Shortly after Nichole arrived, Joanna and Vinnie Rinaldi, their two children, Nicky and Malcolm, and Everett Hill’s son Jagger—a whimsical little carrot-top everyone called Froggy—arrived in their converted school bus. They had been East visiting Vinnie’s parents and were looking after Jagger while Everett was finishing up a jail term in San Quentin for a legal misunderstanding involving money and methedrine.

  Vinnie was devoid of personal affectations, the best imaginable companion for our life of adventure and uncertainty. He was the kind of man who would (and did) hitchhike from New Mexico to Boston one midwinter in order to pick up a free truck and drive it back to New Mexico because his friends there needed one. He and I had shared women, laughter, and music; we had partied till we passed out. He was a trusted b
rother, always high-spirited, a natural comedian and a skilled musician. His arrival was a blessing.

  His wife Joanna was part of the triumval center of gravity (with Marsha and Nina) that ensured the maintenance of the Red House. Unsentimentally practical, acerbic, and possessed of boundless energy for the details of daily living, she and Vinnie are nuts-and-bolts, get-the-job-done people. With Nina, Joanna, Vinnie, and Kent present, a sizable component of the Red House population had been reinstated at Turkey Ridge, and I was optimistic and enthusiastic about our future. I always envied the easy bonhomie of the Red House, enhanced no doubt by the fact that three of the women there were blood sisters but due in large measure, too, to the harmony between Joanna and Nina. I now had reason to believe that Turkey Ridge might be a marked improvement over Olema.

  On the physical plane, Turkey Ridge looked good to Joanna. She reviewed the heated workshop large enough for six vehicles where Kent labored contentedly; the three-story house with only eight people in it instead of thirty (their arrival would swell the population to fifteen); the generous grounds, tight and dry outbuildings, room for gardens, and best of all, old friends. When the invitation to stay was tendered, she and Vinnie accepted readily.

  All the ingredients were now assembled for another Free Family stew, but somehow the safety valve on the pressure cooker had jammed without anyone being aware of it and there was no mechanism to release the escalating pressures momentarily obscured by our initial elation at being together again.

  Walt Poliscewicz (colloquially shortened to Poliski) had worked for my father for more than twenty years. He and coworker Bill Jelinek were a Mutt-and-Jeff team under the authority of the farm’s manager, my childhood mentor in the “laws of nature,” Jim Clancy, the man who had taught me to hunt, fish, and trap. Walt and Bill were responsible for the day-to-day operations of the physical plant, or at least they had been while Morris was alive.

  Bill was a handsome, gregarious, square-jawed Czech with a provocative wit, who must have hidden considerable stress in his life somewhere because his lunches usually consisted of bottled baby food to salve an ulcer. He had been a Seabee during World War II and loved to recount how he hit the beaches in his bulldozer, shielded by the raised blade, and “just drove the hell over everyone and everything.” He also loved teasing Walt, who labored under the lash of Bill’s tongue like a patient ox.

  Walt came from a big family. His brothers Pete and Johnny ran the family farm along with “Pop,” whose banty posture, collarless shirts, and huge soup-strainer mustache made him appear as if he’d just stepped out of a turn-of-the-century daguerreotype. I imagined the family as the evolutionary climax of centuries of Polish dirt farmers, since they appeared to be constructed of natural elements: turned hickory bodies, ham-thick thighs, ore-colored skin. Walt was red-cheeked, shy, slow, and watchful. He pursued every task—feeding the animals, pitching hay, or resting to drink a beer—in the same measured manner. He had a finely calibrated internal clock that kept him true to an unflagging beat.

  In the summer of 1972, Walt’s brother Johnny broke his back. Besides having sixty head of cows to milk twice a day, Johnny had crops to plant and the winter’s hay to cut, rake, bale, and put up in the barns, or he would lose his farm. Since fostering local culture and sustainable economies was one of our primary organizing principles, helping Johnny seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity for us to introduce ourselves and our intentions to the local community. Furthermore, we genuinely liked the Poliskis, so we agreed to take over John’s farmwork. In return, the Poliski clan gave us nine baby pigs, a ton (literally) of potatoes, and all the milk we could drink or turn into yogurt, ice cream, and butter. They also plowed our large kitchen gardens and gave us generous advice, as good neighbors everywhere in the world do for one another.

  Nothing could be more of a reality check to fantasies, even durable fantasies like our own, than farming. In the Delaware Water Gap area of northeastern Pennsylvania, every spring thaw pushes tons of rock up through the topsoil like bubbles surfacing in ginger ale. I came to believe that these natural impediments to plowing, harrowing, and planting were sent by Mother Earth to punish anyone who would slice her breast with iron.

  The fields had to be cleared of stones every spring. Johnny’s fields were actually at Turkey Ridge, now leased from Morris’s estate. The main field was about sixty acres, roughly the size of sixty football fields. It was bordered by stone fences constructed from the annual drawdown on nature’s rock account. The thick woods, primarily second-growth oak, maple, hickory, and occasional cedars, were crisscrossed with abandoned stone rows, evidence that human relationships with this geologic munificence had strong historic roots and, furthermore, did not always triumph.

  Walt would arrive in our kitchen early each morning and doff his grease-stained hat. The bald spot on his head shone unnaturally white against the baked red of his face and neck. He’d sit in the ladder-backed chair in the corner near the door and sip his coffee in a preoccupied but attentive manner as we finished breakfast and divided up our own responsibilities: children, cooking, gardens, repairs . . . and a contingent to clear the fields with him.

  Nina remembers, with some incredulity, the ease with which Walt was able to get us organized. “Nobody put up any resistance. Everybody jumped into the truck and split and went to work. When we tried to do something like that ourselves, everybody was like, ‘Oh, no, do you think this is a good idea?’ But when Walt came, we just went.”

  Day after day both men and women toiled beside him, huffing and panting equally, lugging and rolling boulders onto a tractor-drawn sledge, dragging the sledge to the edge of the fields, and then relugging and rolling the rocks onto the stone walls.

  The work was grueling, but our bodies responded quickly, becoming strong and hard, and we surprised ourselves with our endurance. Furthermore, the common work enhanced group cohesion and made us increasingly tuned to one another. The women in particular thrived on their growing competence and the revelation that they were equal to such hard labor. Freedom from household chores was an added dividend.

  Walt’s no-nonsense approach made the time pass quickly. Our smoke breaks, beer breaks, and lunch breaks were regulated by Walt’s sense of appropriate timing. We played silly games and practical jokes and refueled on satisfying meals delivered by Pete’s or Walt’s wife: succulent Polish sausage dripping with fat, hot, crusty bread, cold beer, and (particularly coveted) rich chocolate cupcakes with creamy centers. We ingested enormous amounts of calories and burned them off with no residue of body fat. I hesitate to use the word, but there was a purity to our lives at this moment. It was deeply satisfying to sit in the stubbly grass, feeling the burn of hard labor cooling from the small of your back and thighs, the sweat suddenly chilled on your shirt. Skin glowed with ruddy vigor. Humor was pointed and coarse. Breughel would have been comfortable here. We had a common intention, common aches, a common humility before daunting tasks (we cut, raked, baled, stacked, hauled, and restacked twenty-three thousand bales of hay), and common pride in the monument of full barns we created. By our respect for Walt’s mastery, we were made equal and homogeneous as his pupils. Happy pupils, for this interregnum, I might add.

  This was what we had come to do. These labors were the clear and concrete steps by which we would fashion a new world from the old, by which we would take our place in continuity with archaic, self-evidently worthwhile labors and values. Each transplanted rock was another unit of currency banked in our accounts with this value-rich, cash-poor farming community. Each pulled ligament, smashed finger, and day dedicated to work until flattened by exhaustion were tithes to our vision. After years of playing roam-where-you-will, invent-it-as-you-go, we were finally, and blissfully, yoked to a fine, clear task. Such focus is its own reward.

  Day by day, the fields were cleared and prepared for plowing. The blade of the wind lost its keen edge and the occasional warm breeze prophesied the coming of spring. Frost evaporated off the grasses earlier each day, and
the sun burned with renewed vigor. The grazing deer were fat with foals, and traces of new leaves appeared as a green wash on the gray forest. The stalls had been emptied and the winter’s accumulation of hay and manure spread over the fields as pungent nourishment for the next season’s grass. The world was right in its orbit.

  For those taking their turn at house duties, there was much to be done as well: five children to be tended, the house and gardens to be cared for. Fifteen people had to be fed three times a day, which involved planning menus, shopping (gleaning or harvesting), ensuring that everything was ready at the right time, and cleaning up. It was difficult, stressful work, and people working as hard as we were in the fields were unsparing of the cook who stinted on effort.

  Joanna remembers: “Even though the women may have embraced and enjoyed their tasks, they were not tasks that were coveted.” She is right, of course. All of our “appreciation” of the women and their work did not extend to valuing that work as dearly as our own. With hindsight, our division of labor seems archaic, particularly for a visionary community. The Digger scene was quite conventional in terms of men’s and women’s roles, until the labors at Turkey Ridge demanded radical changes. Sam remembers very clearly the creak of my inner wheels adjusting the first time I had to cover the house while the others went to the fields: “So Coyote finally gets his day in the kitchen and as we’re pulling out, he comes running out of the house going, ‘Hey, look, you can’t leave all the kids here. I’ve gotta cook!’ The women all looked at each other and said, ‘Right!’ ”