The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  Everyone was selling a bit of grass then, so when the need for money arose, it was natural for Gary to think of Hank. Whatever Hank could cut loose for him to sell in Santa Cruz he could use to start the legal business. And it didn’t take long for this to happen. Gary planted a few well-placed words with his friends in the health food business about quantities of marijuana, and they told a friend, who told a friend, who knew a friend, who indeed did want more than just a lid or two. Someone wanted ten pounds, the next guy only five, and someone might, just might want fifty. Or sometimes it was hash, Afghani, dark, sweet, exotic, or Moroccan, brown or gold, or some lucky times red, like fingers of Nepalese, smuggled in cars, luggage, motor homes, up through Europe to England to Canada and then down, down, down to California to Devore and up to Santa Cruz, or shipped in crates that said furniture or something nice like furniture, but never saying hashish, Afghani. So Gary let them buy something other than grains, as a favor to himself and to friends, to pals, to old times and new times, and then going back to nuts and seeds, and shelves and the things that made him happy and satisfied and fulfilled. It took Gary about three months to raise the two thousand he needed to rent a small warehouse and buy the first inventory of rice and almonds and millet. The grains were better than the pot and Gary was entirely in tune with the comfort of legal business. Next to the grass, the risk of losing a few dollars was nothing compared to the risk of incarceration. But Gary’s problem was keeping his imagination in tune with his financial reality; his mind was always racing ahead of him, seeing the possibility in terms of energy and product. His imagination still wanting more and seeing more than his actual reality.

  The wholesale business would not support his vision, and the extra time he found himself with had to be utilized. First just a friend or two wanted a bit of rice, some almonds, or walnuts, anything at all, but just a bit cheaper please. If he sold more and sold it cheaper, the income would keep the business afloat plus it would be a new concept in marketing; a co-operative that functioned for the good of the community, and, as well, let him explore the full range of his imaginative tendencies on a grander scale while servicing the human need of his peers. He could have the best of both worlds. And so the co-op came into existence. But once that was up and running, another plateau appeared. His imagination languished because it could only service what existed, not what might come, not what might be in the realm of possibility. This imagination wanted to fly, to stretch, to challenge each new moment and use it to soar again. This imagination he could not control, so he no longer tried to hem it into defined limits, nor could this imagination imagine stasis and so his business was never something he envisioned as an end or even a means to an end but a process that allowed him to satisfy this creativeness bursting inside him. So he submitted to this imaginative process and let it solve each problem as it appeared, for what is business, what is life, except a series of problems that need a mindful inventive solution for solving? What is it if not this?

  Where do values arise if not from the problems that present themselves? It was in this realm that Gary felt comfortable. The values and solutions that came as he went, so to speak. The values and business ideas that had existed from beginning of time were the values and ideas he sidestepped. He wanted nothing conventional. He was not exactly joining the system but creating a new system within an old one. Where does the courage to go beyond what might be acceptable to another stem from, if not the imagination that informs the choices we make as we make them from the problems that arise from this life as we live it? What choice is not the right choice if it is well formed in the mind of the chooser as how he wants to proceed in choosing? And a choice well-formed from past mistakes is a choice well informed and must be accepted by those who expect a choice. So he left the world of art and the entirely experimental to begin again in a different context. He had made a definitive choice on the way his life was to be lived. And who does not expect choice? In some way we are all choosers of something each moment that we rise in our blood to choose from. Each moment we arise and work and live and sleep and eat is a chosen one to choose in. Gary let each moment fulfill itself within his reality and then opened his mind to the possibility of choosing what this new world offered and looked into the new world to see what plateaus might yet be overcome and what choices there might yet be to make. This mind had no intention in front of it, no absolute horizon on which it sat, no structure it meant to be mindful of; this mind was itself its own source of energy to choose in and Gary simply allowed it to live as it needed inside him, mindful of the tasks and the choices that arose before him minute after minute, tasks that turned to yet another moment of choosing and another and yet one more defined choice.

  His taste for food was particular; he loved the products he sold, but he had a sweet tooth that he could not satisfy. He no longer ate sugar, and chocolate gave him a headache. Many of his friends felt the same. When he heard about a candy company in Watsonville, his mind thrust forward again. He made an appointment with the candy maker, and within six months they had devised a new product. Yogurt-covered nuts and raisins. Sweets for the sweet tooths that no longer wanted the common sweets of their childhoods, sweets for those whose ideas were changing, and growing, and redefining themselves with each small choice they made, each common moment they chose to bring food to their mouths, how they chose to think, to live, to read, and to act. These things were in Gary’s mind each and every moment that he defined for himself a new product, a new way to interpret this world that kept growing and expanding and moving into realities he had never imagined. So each new choice became a stepping stone to yet another reality as if each step became a finished canvas he could frame and hang on the wall and admire. And once this was done he would put another white canvas on his easel like a blank page to dab with inky globs of oil, each stroke of his imagination adding texture and dimension. Once the yogurt-covered raisins were well seeded in the market place, once he had traveled the state of California introducing the new product, once he had the vendor assured, he sold his products along with yogurt-covered almonds and the knowledge that the tastes of Americans were changing and growing and developing like this mind that moved him onward and outward from these same souls that he serviced.

  Yet now he was beyond himself. He had an eye for a new age of eaters, grazers, gorpers. He pooh-poohed packaging because of environmental waste, developed bins for grocery stores, permanent displays for his products, to be used again and again by consumers, consumers helping themselves to bulk products in co-operative, sunflower seeds without salt, raw nuts, wholesome soy products, baked not fried, a melody of foods, Melody Foods, the business name, grew day by day, month by month, and one day, he knew, his imagination knew, this imagination that would not let him settle for the common and the everyday kept informing this new reality with small choices that formed itself into new realities that would someday carry him forward, day by simple day, to launch his assault on the food industry straight to the Heartland.

  Yet all assaults that are effective are also bound to the common and the everyday and this is where Gary’s imagination and reality spilled into each other and over each other and stewed in their own seductive cauldron. So while Gary was taking each day as it came to him, he was not only bound to the reality of his imagination and his business life; he was bound in a deep and profound way to Lucy’s reality and how he imagined it to be. He believed with all his heart that his rift with Lucy was not because of anything external that happened. Not even when she had left for Costa Rica. His own internal cauldron, dissatisfied and frustrated with the quality of his experimental work, had moved him away from her before she had left San Bernardino. What Gary had not put into an idea was that he was experimenting with types of freedom and how they impacted his life. The experiments he had indulged with in his painting had something he tried to define as freedom, yet this freedom kept failing him. What he had now in this business was a disciplined activity that moved him on to choices that informed his world.
He was not intent on stasis, or some image of himself cast in the world, but intent only on this activity that provided above all else the room for experimentation. His painterly eye turned to a subjective ‘I’ that incorporated a distinctive will within the context of his work. This willfulness he found to be a source of never ending fascination, for within the decidedness of his movement he found as well the need to satisfy his will’s ravenous appetite for creation and change. Oftentimes he was uncertain where the will diminished and the imagination took hold. Within his own particular reality, the two were intrinsically twined together like garlands of myrtle and morning glory, for if he felt willfulness diminish, his active imagination brought forth some idea that needed the will to fulfill it. If the imagination were fallow, the will would blast its way through to invention again. The evershifting eye of Gary’s reality moved its focus back and forth, between the ‘eye’ of his imagination and the ‘I’ of his will; both eyes were needed for seeing.

  This was his fortunate forward-moving position in the world. Now, however, that his life was integrated with his work, another disciplined direction had formed itself inside him. His child had been born, and it was time to bring Lucy home. Gary had stayed in close touch with Mary Pointer as she moved through the Costa Rican red tape to free Lucy from her incarceration. And all this provided him with more grist for the mill of his life. Lucy and the child would, with any luck, become part of his reality. He had forgiven her long ago for going to Costa Rica. Now that she found herself in trouble, he only wished to help her. He blamed, in fact, himself and his own trouble with his art and thus their relationship. Like the rest of his life, he wanted to move into a direction of choosing with Lucy and the child. Something that would expand his reality to a fuller world. He had supplied money to Lucy and Mary as they needed it; the world of business had provided him with the comfort of taking care of the people he cared about when they were in need. That the child had been born at the same time the legal entanglements had cleared seemed only a matter of lucky coincidence.

  Gary flew to Costa Rica a week after the baby was born. As he deplaned and walked past the same counter where Lucy had been busted, he thought about the difference that had come to him since this child was conceived. He had given birth to a new way of seeing himself as well as seeing the child he was about to claim. This son, this child of his own. He knew it even if Lucy didn’t. He had always believed this. He wondered about Lucy as he moved through the crowds of people to the baggage claim, wondering how she’d held up through the experience. The luggage carrier circled in front of him, and, distracted, he noticed a tall air-captain staring at him. Annoyed, he turned his thoughts to Lucy and the reality of seeing her after all these months suddenly comforted him in a way he hadn’t expected. This comfort appealed to another part of his existence, but was an integral part of him as if his head had been running with just the idea of his heart in it: Lucy, who presence had been real but absent and now a reality forming itself anew.

  A kiss to build a dream on …

  CHAPTER 23

  MARY ROCKED HER GRANDCHILD, a mere bit of a thing, rocking him, back and forth while Lucy played Parchesi with Ruby and Angel. She was pleased with this life somehow, fear of all now past, taking each minute, grateful somehow. These women were like Maria and Tina and Lupe and Patricia and Ruthie and the others that bent each day over the sewing machines at the warehouse making bikinis without complaining day in and day out, helping each other and working together to feed their children and their husbands who picked in the fields; but the women at home were doing better because they worked for Mary. Yet, did she do enough, she wondered, and knew without thinking as she held this child that she did not. She had not. Yet her own employees were like these women that had only the spirit of giving and doing and working and helping. How could she not do more? She wondered at her own blind-sidedness. How could she not have seen? Mary stroked the child’s head, and made a promise to herself about the future. The future she saw as more complex, yet somehow better. Her spirit seemed less energized by mere profit, but still energized by enough profit to keep things going. She was interested in the complexity of discovering a different kind of profit, something less tangible, something she might not measure by her usual standards.

  Had she only felt for herself? She knew that was not true. She concerned herself always with her family. And she did serve her employees. Didn’t she? Yes. Yes, she could answer yes, but she could not answer enough yeses. What was the problem, exactly, she wondered. And what then, was the solution? She must think on it, she thought, for a way to enhance everything when they went home. The women who worked for Mary, like these women in jail, had children. Perhaps, she thought, they might bring the children to work, like these women brought children to jail, and share in the care. Then things would be better, wouldn’t they, thought Mary, and she liked very much her own idea about this, wondering why she had to learn this from these women in jail, and so far away from home, and why she had not thought it on her own. She must see that the women who worked for her were succeeding, but she had not thought it until then, and so she rocked her grandchild and liked the thoughts she was having, liked them for the first time in a very long time. This bleak place made her full in some way she could not quite figure. The living conditions were rough, yet she felt better because of the hardship, not diminished because of it. Mary liked these women who always helped each other. The children, too, were always helping, rolling beans in tortillas while babies sucked on soggy bananas, with runny noses. Someone here was always caring for something, if not feeding, comforting a cry, a sadness, a remorse, a remorsefulness that filled every bit of the jail in an odd and comforting way.

  Mary rocked the baby, the baby sleeping a baby sleep, sigh, sweet baby, rocking and rocking. She looked up to see Gary who had just walked in smiling, and Mary smiled now for her daughter, for happiness, for something good, and Gary, she knew, was goodness. He was not like the other one, the one that aroused her soul to dark anger, the painful sharp mother’s anger that burned like liquid steel melting her better self. She couldn’t let this anger overcome these good things that were happening in this bad time. Was this a bad time? She couldn’t think bad things about this anymore. After all the hard months, now, she had this child, Lucy’s baby. She was glad for what she had, so glad, she couldn’t see any badness in this moment, this jail moment.

  Gary walked up behind Lucy as she skipped two blue marbles, Angel huffed, Ruby laughed, and feeling his presence Lucy turned as Gary put his hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re here, God. I can’t believe you’re here,” Lucy said getting up from the wooden bench and scootching the Parchesi board away. Angel frowned. Gary kissed Lucy and handed her a furry teddy bear.

  “A present,” he smiled.

  “Oh great.”

  “Not for you.”

  Lucy took the baby from her mother and handed him to Gary. He was unprepared for how he might feel, absolutely stunned by the miracle of this baby, not thinking for a minute about Jackson, or the possibility, but about Lucy, about the baby, about the bright swell of his heart rising and overwhelming contentedness; both Lucy and this baby, now under his care, protectively, accepting and welcoming the opportunity of fatherhood and responsibility. And Ruby recognized all these things in him instantly as he held the baby, and liked this man, immediately, and could tell in a heartbeat, that he was made of good things, and he was a wonder to her, a marvel, a magical source of manhood, something she had never seen, and stood in awe of now, as she watched this man hold this child who might not even be his.

  “Have you named him?”

  “Joshua. Do you like Joshua?”

  “Joshua Merchant. Yes. I like it. Is that all right with you?” Gary had been writing Lucy since she’d been in jail. Months now. Months and months. Jackson had never come, never written, never done anything. God, how could she have ever trusted him? Ever? How could she not have known? It was beyond her. And now she had Gary. Th
ank God, she had Gary.

  Finally the lawyers had had success and the money he had sent to Mary had helped arrange Lucy’s release. Lucy was going home, finally, with her baby, leaving her new friends, leaving Ruby behind, with her guard, and the life Ruby had now, the one Lucy was leaving, gratefully, regretfully, but somehow better for, somehow better for knowing this Ruby, and Angel, with her round cherub face, cherub body, only wanting another game of Parchesi, nothing more, not money, not anything, not even out, like Lucy, only one more game, with blue marbles, this Angel. This angel in jail because she looked like someone else, someone calculating, forward thinking, with stupid guts. Angel had no guts, not even stupid ones. A one-year-old toddler stepped in Angel’s way, moving in tiny steps to the ruff of Angel’s skirt. The child grabbed the skirt, put her head against Angel’s fat thigh; Angel put her hand on the child’s head. Why? Just because. That’s why. Just because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s why. Lawyers? No. No lawyers without money. Angel will grow old with Ruby. Ruby and Angel. Growing old together. They will both be older when Lucy leaves, when Lucy leaves tomorrow. And sadder. They will be sadder then, and think different things, after Lucy goes, they will think in different ways, not better ways, but different ways, and they will be less happy, knowing loneliness, they will be less happy with who they are, where they are, it will all change tomorrow, when Lucy goes, and they will be less happy, Angel and Ruby.