“Blue!”
The guilt from gassing my best friend passes quickly and I can’t help but laugh.
“Rude!” She’s trying to sound mad but I hear her giggles. We’re used to farts in the community because our diet includes a lot of beans, but they’re still funny to us.
Harmony slows her pace and I don’t blame her. I crawl around the next bend and run into a dead end. Above us a small beam of light streams into the circular space. There’s just enough room for the two of us to sit cross-legged facing each other. Without either saying it aloud, I’m pretty sure we’re both thinking the same thing. This is one of the coolest places we’ve ever found. Much cooler than the forts we used to make under the community table when we were little. And like our favorite hollowed-out tree, this is a place only we know about.
“Far out,” she finally says.
We sit quietly for several minutes, soaking in the magic of our discovery. The metallic smell of minerals oozes from the pores of our tiny room. Harmony lifts her arm and strokes the textures of the wall around us, as if she can read its history. She finds a small stone and carves her name into the rock face, then tosses the stone to me. I write mine next to hers. Harmony Blue. It sounds like one of those herbal teas Sirona buys from the co-op in Sebastopol.
It’s a magical place but there’s not much to do in the dark so we make our way back out and into the open, where the sun nearly blinds me and the heat is suffocating.
Harmony finds a flat spot under a willow. “You hungry?”
We eat our sandwhiches and share the apple we picked on our way here. She chucks the core into the brush and opens her sketchbook. I start turning over rocks and watch as bugs and beetles scatter to find cover while Harmony works on a drawing. On the fifth rock I hit the jackpot.
“I found one! I found a tiger salamander!”
Harmony looks up from her sketch and squints in the bright sun.
“Don’t you want to see it?”
She tucks the pencil behind her ear. “Bring it over here.”
I capture the salamander and sit next to her. When I open my hand it jumps off and disappears into the grass and rocks. “Bogue!”
Harmony wrinkles her nose. “It was really pretty but it’d probably rather be with its own family than us.”
“I know. But I’ve been searching for one forever.”
She reopens her sketchbook. “You’ll find another one.”
I lean over her shoulder to get a better look at her work. It’s a picture of Rain.
“What do you think of her?”
Harmony lifts her pencil from the page. “Who, Rain? I don’t know. She seems nice. Almost too nice.”
“That’s a really good sketch. She looks pretty.”
“She is pretty. All the brothers stare at her, even Goji. The sisters too.” Harmony narrows her eyes at me. “And a certain Younger, who, by the way, can forget about it because she is waaaay out of his league.”
I grin. “Are we jealous?”
She frowns at me. “Not jealous. I’m just telling it like it is, man.” She goes back to work on the drawing, making sure her long brown hair covers the page so I can’t see.
“Hey, Harmony, can I ask you something?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She doesn’t look up.
“You really don’t miss your mom?”
“Nope, not anymore.”
I can’t tell if she’s hiding how she really feels or if she means it. That’s always how it is with Harmony.
“Well, I miss her. I get why you were mad at Gaia for leaving but it was nice to see her, even for a little bit.”
Harmony closes her pad and stuffs it back in the pack. “What about your parents? You never talk about your first family. Don’t you miss them?”
Harmony knows I was adopted by the family but not the part about it not being legal. She’s asked for details before but I got flustered and she could tell the subject is pretty much off limits. It’s one of the things I like about Harmony. She doesn’t try to pick the lock when you close a door. But that doesn’t mean she won’t knock every once in a while.
“How can I miss what I don’t remember?”
Harmony tugs on a blade of dead grass. “Maybe a person can miss what they’ve never known. I’ve never been to the circus but I feel like I miss that feeling of being at a circus when I read about it.” She turns to look at me. “You wanna know what I really do miss?”
“What?”
“Bacon. I ate it at the shelter once and it tasted so good. When Ruth saw me eating it she slapped it out of my hand. I was only four.”
“What did it taste like?”
“She closes her eyes and moans. “Like salty, greasy, chewy, crunchy . . . everything.”
“I’ve never had meat and I never want any. The animals . . . I couldn’t.”
“Like I said, I was four and it tasted good. I’m pretty sure it would gross me out now but I really miss not getting to enjoy the rest of that slice. I miss other stuff, too, like candy and caramel corn. I know the Olders say sugar is bad, but sometimes I want cookies with real chocolate, not carob and honey.”
“I bet our neighbor would make you some.”
She grins. “Mrs. Fuller? What a good idea! Let’s go see her.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m sorry about . . . you know. The stuff you don’t know.”
“Goji promised to tell me more, give me more details when I turned twelve. But then Gaia showed up with Rain—”
Harmony throws her hands up in the air. “See? Ruth screws up everything!”
“He says he didn’t technically mean on my birthday.”
She drops her hands and puffs her cheeks, blowing out a sigh. “That’s bullshit, man. A promise is a promise.” She drops her charcoal pencils into our pack. “You need to hold him to it.”
“Maybe I should bring it up at our next writing session.”
“Maybe? You deserve to know your history, Blue. You want me to ask him?”
“No!” I blurt it out too loud and too quickly. She looks at me, obviously stung. “I mean, I’ll do it. I want to.”
Harmony tilts her head to one side and narrows her eyes. “You’re braver than you think you are.”
I just nod and try to look convinced. She has no idea that most of my courage comes from watching her.
We pack up the rest of our things and walk back toward the creek. When we reach the bank, Harmony and I look at each other and grin. We both jump in, kicking and splashing, then sit on the sandy bottom as the water rushes by and minnows nibble at our toes. Harmony leans back on her hands, grinning. “The water feels sooooo good.”
After a few minutes, I climb back up the bank and wait for her to join me. “We should get going. I told Jade we’d be home to help with dinner.”
Harmony crawls out of the creek, pulls off her T-shirt, and wrings it out before putting it back on. As we start back down the path I find a stick to use as a hiking pole.
Harmony laughs. “What do you need that for, old man? You blind?”
“I like the way it’s bent. Maybe I’ll whittle something cool into the handle.”
“Hey, Blue, look.” She closes her eyes and throws her hands straight out in front of her, teetering forward. “Let’s see how far we can make it home without looking. Whoever falls first is the loser.”
I squeeze my eyelids shut. “I’m in!” I keep my distance behind Harmony so I don’t accidentally poke her with my stick. “No peeking!”
We both laugh as we stumble along, tripping on roots and clunking into branches. Until I hear her scream.
When I open my eyes I spot the small snake, see it lurch backward from her shin. Without thinking I fling the snake with my stick. It flies through the air and lands in the sage several yards from us before scurrying away.
“Did it bite you?”
She points to her leg where two tiny fang marks start to bleed. “I think I stepped on it.”
“We need to get you b
ack home. Listen, Wave told me if I ever get bit the first thing is to stay calm.”
Harmony looks at me and nods. Tears run down her tanned cheeks.
“You’re gonna be okay. We just need to get to SFC so they can take you to the hospital.” I pull the water jar from my bag and empty the last few swallows on her leg. She flinches but doesn’t make a sound.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. We probably shouldn’t run. Are you calm?”
Her lower lip trembles.
“Take deep breaths.”
She inhales slowly, then lets it out even more slowly, just like we learned in meditation practice. I grab hold of her hand and we start back down the path. Harmony limps a bit so I give her my stick to take some of the weight off her leg.
“You’re doing great. Just a little farther.”
We’re almost to the community boundary when she keels over without a word. I drop beside her. “Harmony!”
No response.
I plunge my hand into the leather bag and pull the whistle over my head. I blow as hard as I can. Harmony rolls her head to one side and mumbles but doesn’t open her eyes. Her ankle is starting to swell and turn pink. I scoop her up and struggle to run as fast as I can, blowing the whistle with every breath as we race toward home.
5
The sister-mothers take my side at first, offering to drive to the hospital in Santa Rosa. Sirona would claim to be Harmony’s mother, since she’s the oldest.
Goji shakes his head. “It’s too risky. The bureaucrats will take Harmony away from us if they find out Gaia doesn’t live here anymore.”
I know he’s also afraid that if the cops start asking questions, they’ll take me, too. And maybe find Coyote, who is AWOL.
Wave carries Harmony over his shoulder up the treehouse ladder and gently lays her on her bed. I sit on the floor next to Harmony’s mattress as Sirona works on the wound. She smears a muddy clay mixture over the fang bites, then lightly wraps the leg with clean rags.
“She’ll be fine,” Goji assures me when I start crying. “You need to have faith in her strong body.”
I look up at Goji, hoping to change his mind about taking her to the hospital. “What if she isn’t fine?”
He touches me gently on the shoulder. “Sirona’s a healer. Your sister is fierce. She’ll be okay.”
“Harmony isn’t just a sister!” I wipe my runny nose on my arm. “She’s my best friend.”
“And it is that love that will help heal her.”
I want to believe him. I want to believe him so badly. But I don’t. We’re used to dealing with flu and bug bites and poison oak and even having babies. This is way more serious.
Goji squats next to me and twists his long black beard. “You said it was a little snake, right, Clover Blue?”
I nod.
“Baby rattlers store less venom because they’re small. And most of the bites are dry.”
“But Harmony is small, too.”
He stands and gently tugs on a lock of my hair. “Let’s go make some herbal tea for when she wakes up.”
I don’t budge.
“Come, little brother.”
He reaches for my hand but I lean away. “I want to stay here.”
Goji takes a deep breath. He lets it out slowly. “Okay. Okay, Clover Blue,” he says again, nodding to himself as he walks away.
* * *
Rain has moved into Jade and Sirona’s room for now to give Harmony more space while she recovers. Goji returns after dinner and crouches on his haunches, watching and waiting for instructions from Sirona. Goji might be the head of our family but watching the two of them it’s obvious that Sirona is in charge of this.
Sirona’s freckled face flushes as she carefully applies another mud pack. She stops just below the knee where a scab has formed from when Harmony and I climbed a tree a few days ago and she slipped.
Sirona steps to the head of the bed. “We need to make sure the bite wound is lower than her heart.”
Harmony is like a rag doll, pale and limp, as we prop her upper body with pillows. I’m scared for us. I’m scared for me.
* * *
Sirona and Goji sit all night with me, watching over Harmony. I try to stay awake but eventually fall asleep on the floor next to the bed. When sunlight shines into the room early the next morning Goji is gone. Harmony is still asleep. I touch her arm. It’s hot.
“Don’t wake her,” Sirona whispers. “She needs rest. She’ll wake when she’s ready.”
Jade and Coyote trade places with Sirona so she can get some sleep. Jade lays a cool, wet cloth on Harmony’s head. Harmony barely opens her eyes before closing them again.
Coyote nudges me with his bare foot. “You should get something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“A man needs to be strong for his friends, Blue. Nourishment gives you strength.”
I don’t answer and I don’t move. People come and go all day. They chant, they pray, they sing, and sometimes they even laugh. Goji insists on only positive energy. I don’t know how they can laugh when our sister is so sick. I want to yell at them but I don’t because Goji will make me leave the room. So I just sit and wait.
* * *
I spend most of the day next to Harmony. She makes little noises in her sleep but still hasn’t come fully awake. Sirona returns in the afternoon to carefully exchange the clay compresses for herbal ones that smell worse than skunk.
“How long before she’ll wake up?”
Sirona smiles. “It takes as long as it takes,” she says, sounding more like Goji than the young, dancing, mud-covered woman I remember from Woodstock.
Back then it was just the six of us: Goji, Willow, Wave, Jade, Doobie, and me. I don’t remember much from the first couple years after I came here, but sometime during that summer my memories kick in, as if my brain suddenly threw the switch that saves stuff. Three things stand out: The astronauts landed on the moon. A bunch of hippies murdered some movie stars in Hollywood. And the Saffron Freedom Community attended Woodstock Music Festival in New York.
One of the sister-mothers had brought home a flyer about the concert with a big white bird on it. I sounded out the words, Peace, Love & Music, at the top as I colored in the bird using broken crayons. Goji looked at the paper and shook his head. “Why would we travel that far when we already have all that here?”
Around that same time, the townies started getting paranoid, staring and pointing at us when we were out running errands. With his small frame and dark hair, Goji looked a little like the newspaper photos of Charles Manson, although Goji’s eyes are much kinder. But the weirdness from locals was enough to change Goji’s mind about taking the trip.
The Olders packed coolers with food and a wooden box with water jugs filled from the artesian wells on our property. They tied everything on the roof of the van. It was Wave’s van from his surfing days. The seats in the back had been torn out and replaced with a mattress. The inside walls were covered in posters with peace signs and a giant mushroom that reminded me of the Alice in Wonderland book that Willow sometimes read to me.
Our family drove three thousand miles across the country to the concert, along with every flower child who managed to find a ride. It took us days to get there; I just remember driving and driving and driving. We bounced around as we listened to music on the radio and from a mound of 8-track tapes stacked in a box between the front seats. It was hot in the back but the windows were open so the air was fresh, if you don’t count the smell of pot and all those sweaty bodies laughing and singing and sleeping in a pile.
We got stuck behind what looked like a million cars. We climbed on top of the van and used the coolers as chairs to wait for the line to move. It never did. Eventually the Olders just grabbed everything they could carry, which is pretty much what everyone in line did. By the time we arrived at Woodstock there was no gate. People flooded in and we were just a tiny drop in the wave of hippie
s washing over the broken-down fences.
We ended up so far back from the stage that we could hear music and some of the announcements on the big speakers, but we couldn’t actually see the bands. What stands out most about Woodstock is it was the first time I saw people outside of SFC who were naked. People running around like little kids slipping and sliding in the mud, dancing, and having the time of their lives, even in the rain. My other distinct memory is that I stepped on a bee. Goji carried me, screaming, to a volunteer medical station and that was where we first met Sirona, although she had a different name back then.
There was a long line at the medical tent. By the time it was our turn, my foot had swelled to the size of a lumpy potato. Inside the tent, a lady with red hair and freckles smiled at me. She was tall and round like the old paintings in Harmony’s art books. Her boobs, her belly, and her thighs looked like different-sized mounds of rising bread. It turned out she was camped near us and she spent a lot of time talking with Goji after that.
When the music stopped our family trudged back to the road along with thousands of other tired, dirty people to find the van had been ripped off. The tires were gone, along with the music tapes and the posters. A blue truck happened upon the six of us trudging along the road with our thumbs out like so many others. We’d been walking for hours. The driver skidded to a stop and threw open the passenger door. I was so happy to see it was the lady from the medical tent. During that ride, Goji began calling her Sirona, after a Celtic healing goddess. Sirona lived in Vermont at the time, but she drove us all the way back to California. And she’s been with us ever since.
Sirona tickles the bottom of my foot, breaking me out of my daydream. “What are you thinking about, Blue? You look like you’re lost in space.”
“I was just wondering if you miss your home back east.”
She glances out Harmony’s bedroom window to where several of the others are gathered around the community table drinking lemonade. “Sometimes I miss the snow and the fall colors. That’s why I go back to visit every couple of years.”
Clover Blue Page 5