“When you say that, do you mean you love just me, or do you mean you love me like in love one another, as the other fellow says?” Blue’s voice edging back from an angry precipice.
31
When Blue came into the kitchen, Tinker was at the table reading another book. Blue ran a glass of water for himself and stared at the cover, trying to identify the white block on the spine.
“It’s Audel’s encyclopaedia of mechanics,” Tinker explained, holding the book up for Blue to examine closer. “Casey, this mechanic I’m working with, tells me I got good instincts about machines but he says I got the technique of a hog butcher. He’s showing me things that Charlie forgot to mention, and he told me about these books that can teach you a lot about machines and fixing them, so I joined the library on my way home—”
“Joined the library!”
“Yeah! I just walked in there and nobody batted an eye, so I signed up and signed out this book. It’s about everything I like, and you won’t believe this but it knows a lot more about the Plymouth than I do. I’ll let you borrow it after I’m finished.”
“Tinker,” Blue said, sitting himself across from his friend, “do you ever wonder what’s happening to us? I mean, here we are stranded in ’Frisco until we get enough dough to go home. That’s not really our fault, and you got a job and I got the band so I figure we should be home for Christmas. Know what would be really great? To be crossing the causeway on Christmas Eve. Not tell anybody, just come home on Christmas Eve with a carload of gifts that’ll make the old lady cry. You know how soft she is, but I digress, as the other fellow says.
“But we’re not home, Tinker. Which is my point. We’re sitting in a purple and green kitchen full of nothing to eat, with somebody called the Gratefully Dead on the stereo instead of Scottie Fitzgerald on the radio, talking about library books. This is going to be a funny story someday but I’m not laughing right now. I feel like I’m getting squeezed. You know how when you’re in a stall and a horse leans all its weight against you, squeezing the breath right out of you, well, that what’s it’s like here, except that it feels like everything I know is getting squeezed out of me. I know how to punch a horse back off me when that happens, but I don’t know how to get out from under this, Tinker.”
“You’d know how to get out from under it if you were talking about Capricorn. You’d just punch him like a horse. So it must be Karma. Again.”
“What do you need to go to a library for, Tinker? You read me like a book. Yup, it’s her again. I’m glad God made women so beautiful but I wish he hadn’t made them so damn smart. Listen to this. There’s only one sin in the whole world. Did you know that? Only one sin. The priests, the nuns, even the Pope got it all wrong with their mortal sins and venial sins because there is only one sin in the whole world, and it’s not even sex. It’s something called ... THE FAILURE TO LOVE,” Blue said, dropping his voice to the bottom of his larynx. “I won’t try to explain it, but it’s a heresy. I’m in love with a friggin’ pagan, Tinker. What do you think about my idea for Christmas?”
“I like the idea, Blue, but I don’t like what happens when I think it through. Christmas itself would be great, but then all that’s left is February, and you have to love home a lot to want to be there in February. As the old man used to say, everywhere else in the world February is the shortest month but in Cape Breton it goes on forever. Think about it, Blue. The Big Ice, cold wind, frozen water pipes, snow storms to be shovelled away, your fingers and your toes curled up inside your gloves and boots trying to stay warm but they can’t, and your ears stinging red, standing on John Beaton’s Corner cursing the goddamned cold. When I think of home, it’s always summer and that’s when I’d like to go back. Besides, I like the tunnel. I feel a lot closer to home down there than I would freezing in my own bedroom next February. And Blue, I’m not interested in running away from Kathy.”
“I never ran away from anything in my life, you know that, so don’t accuse me of it,” Blue snapped. “I was just thinking that it would be nice for us to go home for Christmas, that’s all. I didn’t know you didn’t like home.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I just don’t see the point in going home for the winter when I hate the winter, but you sound an awful lot like somebody who wants to run home to Mommy just because your girlfriend won’t baby you.”
Blue’s fist flashed across the table and Tinker jerked away from the surprise attack, tipping his chair, crashing to the floor. The table up-ended on top of him, and Blue dove into the mess of friend and furniture, swinging wildly. They rolled around, punching and kicking at whatever they thought was each other, cursing and grunting until the kitchen filled with the membership of the Human Rainbow Commune who wrestled them apart.
Blue and Tinker stood at opposite sides of the kitchen, glaring, panting angrily, but making no effort to shake off the people who held them apart. The others in the kitchen kept a confused silence until Karma lifted a cloth to wipe a trickle of blood from Blue’s lip. He pushed her hand aside and ran from the room. A moment later, the front door slammed.
It was after midnight when Blue returned to the commune. He wavered in the doorway of the common room, then took a staggering step toward Tinker and Kathy’s door when Karma intercepted him and guided him into their room, easing him onto the mattress.
“Gotta talk to Tinker,” he mumbled.
“Tinker’s asleep. He has to work in the morning. You better sleep, too, Blue. There’ll be a lot to talk about in the morning.”
“Tinker’s not asleep. I know my buddy. He’s not asleep. Get him for me.”
“Let him be, Blue. If you need to talk to someone, talk to me tonight. What do you want to talk about?”
“Winter. Have you ever been in Cape Breton in the wintertime, Karma? You should see it. The ice come down from the North Pole. People call it the Big Ice, and it covers up the whole ocean. It looks as calm as anything, but when you walk out on it you can feel the ocean rising and falling under it, all those waves trying to break, but can’t. It feels like something being smothered and struggling under a pillow. And there are seals everywhere, big ones and little ones as cute as kittens. They get lost, you know. Seals get lost really fast, especially if the wind jams the ice up tight. Then they can’t find a way into the water so they go looking for an opening. They might follow the river then and wind up inland. Once, eh, this guy back home that works at the Legion, well, he heard a knock on the door and when he answered it here was this seal barking like crazy. But the bartender wouldn’t let him in. Said the seal didn’t have any ID. He didn’t care that the Legion had the approval of a seal, as the other fellow says.
“Another guy found one in his porch and beat it to death with a hockey stick. And the snowplows are always picking off seals that get caught on the roads. Most of them, though, people capture in garbage cans and take them back to the ocean, but it’s not easy. A scared seal is a dangerous thing. When it’s lost and doesn’t know what’s happening to it, even if you’re trying to help it, it doesn’t know that, does it? How can it? Like that guy in the porch. He didn’t kill the seal because he wanted to. He scared the shit out of it and it scared the shit out of him and both of them had nowhere to go so he grabbed the hockey stick and ... two minutes for slashing, to quote the other fellow again.”
Blue paused.
“But Karma, if you could come down with me onto the Big Ice in February, it has to be February, at night, with a full moon, and just go out on the ice far enough to feel it moving under us, it’s so still all you can hear is the rifle crack of ice shifting once in awhile, and maybe a seal barking, but mostly nothing at all, just silence and this strange snow-bright moonlight that lets you see all the way to Prince Edward Island. It’s really beautiful. It is.”
“I know,” Tinker said, barely visible behind the beaded doorway. He pushed the beads aside and came into the room.
“My
old buddy Tinker.” Blue stared up at him. “Told you he wasn’t sleeping. So do you want me to say my act of contrition or what?”
Tinker made a sign of the cross over Blue’s head and Blue stuck out his hand. “Shake on her, buddy,” he said, gripping Tinker’s hand and hanging on to it for a moment. “My toes get just as cold as yours, you know, but there’s things to remember and there’s things to forget.”
“...as the other fellow says,” Karma and Tinker chimed in together.
32
The Commune Council gathered around the table in the kitchen to discuss an agenda that included the violence of the previous night, new developments at the commune in Colorado, and the contribution each member was making toward the food and financial needs of the San Francisco site.
Blue, nursing a hangover, had been coaxed by Karma to get up and join the discussion since his and Tinker’s future with the Human Rainbow Commune was once again being called into question, as it had been in Colorado. He groped his way to the bathroom and, returning with cold water dripping from his face and hair, told Karma that Henry Bruce, “this artist I was telling you about would of gotten a thousand dollars in New York for what I just threw up in there.” Karma guided him out to the kitchen.
“There was an incident here last night that contradicts every value we have,” Capricorn said. “Two members of this commune had a violent confrontation—”
“Who were they? Point them out and I’ll kill them,” Blue interrupted.
“Blue, don’t do this,” Karma pleaded.
“It’s not a joke, Blue. You haven’t the faintest idea of what we consider important. If it wasn’t for Karma, you wouldn’t have anything to do with the commune, and we’d all be a lot happier. We’re not playing a game here. We’re trying to do something creative with our lives, not destructive. You can call it naive, childish, foolish, whatever you like....”
“All of the above, as the other fellow says.”
“...we’ve all been called it before. Where we’re going, or even what’s to become of each of us we don’t know, but at this moment, here, now, we believe in something worth living for, and we believe in each other, and we’re trying hard not to succumb to violent solutions. What happened here last night is unacceptable. What has to be decided this morning is just how acceptable or unacceptable yours and Tinker’s behaviour is to the rest of the Council, and the rest of the commune. Can you explain what happened, or why we shouldn’t expel you?”
“Because what happened last night wasn’t violence,” Blue said, looking around the table. “It was just a friggin’ fist fight. Tinker’s my best friend, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before. Maybe it’s still bothering you but it’s just another story to us now,” he explained. “Look,” he continued, “if you’re going to talk about throwing somebody out, you better know that Tinker didn’t start the fight, I did.”
“Well, it’s not how we solve problems here,” Capricorn said. “There are more humane ways of dealing with conflicts than physical violence.”
“Is there now! And how well does that work, huh? Tinker and I had a problem and now we don’t, but me and you, Capi, we’ve had a problem ever since we met, right? Maybe if we had of stepped outside the first time we realized we didn’t like each other, at least we’d know where we stand now instead of sniping at each other like a couple of old women. So much for your civilized way of dealing with it, which I think is just another way of saying that you’d like to get rid of Tinker and me and this is your big chance, but it’s not fair to Tinker and if you think Tinker should of turned the other cheek, then you can kiss my other cheeks, buddy! That’s all I got to say.”
Watching Capricorn take a deep breath, Blue silently started to count ... one, two, three.... At the stroke of ten, Capricorn began to talk and Blue knew that commune leader had been counting down his anger, trying to control it. Blue flashed him a quick wink and smile, the remnants of his hangover vanishing as Capricorn’s ears reddened with suppressed rage. “Gotcha, you bastard,” Blue whispered to himself.
“This meeting isn’t about getting rid of you or anyone, Blue, it’s about getting rid of violence as a concept. Everybody in this commune was taught in school and even in the movies to celebrate a violent history. Our country, yours too, I suppose, has made heroes of men who have committed genocide. We don’t even allow ourselves to see that there is really no difference between what the Germans did to the Jews and what this continent has done to the Indians, or what it is doing to the Vietnamese right now. Some of us want to find another way of living, another way of seeing, another way of being.
“We understand anger, we know rage, and we believe it’s the greatest waste of energy on the planet. We’ve come to accept the basic truth that violence is not natural. The point of our commune here, and will be when we are able to go back to Colorado, is to create a society in which we have nothing to fear from one another.”
To Blue, who could see Capricorn visibly cooling down, the speech sounded as much a recitation and reminder to the speaker as a sermon to himself.
“I think most people in this commune,” Capricorn continued, “see and accept the fact of why you and Tinker are here, and we believe Karma and Kathy’s influence will probably be more creative on you than yours will be destructive to them. The Commune Council has the choice of calling for a vote on your banishment by all the membership, or issuing a warning directly to you. Does anyone have any objection to a warning instead of a commune vote?” When no one replied, Capricorn went on. “We’ll forget what happened here yesterday, but there mustn’t be an occurrence of it ever again, Blue. Can you agree to that?”
“No problem, buddy,” Blue said, making an open-handed gesture. “Tinker and I don’t get into it more than once or twice a year anyway and the next time it happens, you won’t even know it happened,” Blue promised, but under his cocky assurance to Capricorn he felt a surprising wave of relief that his fate had not been put to the vote.
“The next subject is Colorado,” Capricorn said, moving the meeting along. “For some unexplained reason the FBI have gone back to the commune a number of times since Tulip and Cory were released. People from the commune who have gone back to check it out learned from the townspeople that the FBI have been crawling all over the place. They’ve ransacked anything they hadn’t already destroyed, and have been removing things from the site like the water pumps, even the old compressor.”
“Maybe they think we had a laboratory up there,” Tulip offered. “The two things they were most interested in when they interrogated us were drugs and Capricorn. Special agent Bud Wise is convinced that we were supplying the whole world with LSD, that it was part of Capricorn’s plot to destroy democracy in the United States, although they didn’t even see Cory let the horses munch the marijuana right under their noses. Maybe they’re looking for chemical residue in the pumps to prove we were manufacturing it. Wise is certainly going to do whatever he can to manufacture a case against Capricorn.”
Tulip’s speculation fuelled Blue’s curiosity again.
“What makes you so important, anyway?” he asked Capricorn. “Every time the subject of police comes up around here, so does your name.”
“They’re afraid of the message Capricorn is spreading,” Tulip explained. “Study your history and you’ll find Capricorn crucified all the way through it for offering alternatives. Peace, real peace, is the most frightening thing in the world to people with power. And peace is what we’re reaching for here, all of us. The establishment exists on the exploitation of the masses. When individuals break loose from the masses to think for themselves, the establishment becomes scared, and frightened politicians and police forces are the most dangerous people in the world. They can’t believe that Capricorn has no personal power ambitions. From their Wall Street fortresses peace is a plot.”
“Well, pardon me for living on Wall Street, wherever
it is,” Blue said, “but when you’re talking about crucifixions and peace and stuff like that in the same breath as Capi here, I have to think about things like the anti-Christ and—”
Karma placed her hand on Blue’s arm, and when he turned to her she drew him in with her eyes. “Let it go for now, Blue. We can all talk about it some other time.” Blue slowly opened his hands, releasing the subject like a caught bird while giving Capricorn a look that said the subject would come back again.
Capricorn went on to tell the Council that until they knew what the FBI’s interest in the Colorado commune was, and until the heat of that interest died down, the commune would continue to operate from its San Francisco quarters. Everyone was instructed to keep commune activity at its current low, underground profile.
“Since we are not, despite the FBI’s conviction to the contrary, manufacturing or selling drugs, we do have some financial problems,” Capricorn went on. “Almost everybody is contributing what they can, earning it selling flowers, face painting, making jewellery. Tulip made a major contribution after her art show. But food and rent for two houses here in San Francisco plus other expenses like Tulip and Cory’s legal fees, are mounting up. Some people haven’t made much of a donation to our communal needs, at all. Particularly you and Tinker, Blue.”
“Tinker will get his first cheque next week and take care of both of us,” Blue said, “and I’m working on some ideas.”
“The commune shares what it can, Blue. If one of us can’t contribute for whatever reason then no demands will ever be made on that person. But we can’t tolerate someone among us not making any effort at all to contribute. Tinker will pay his way now that he is working, I’m sure of that. But you’re also working, but contributing nothing.”
“You guys know the weird trip Peter? is on. He’s kept the band so busy practising that there hasn’t been any time to get out on the street and hustle a few bucks with my talent. He doesn’t want us to record. Hell, he’s even asked us to play for nothing, but nobody should play for nothing. We got this guy back home, eh—”
Tinker and Blue Page 18