A Nation of Mystics - Book II: The Tribe

by Pamela Johnson

  Here it comes, she thought.

  “Nope.”

  “Are you still angry about Alex?”

  “No. It was a good lesson for me. It forced me to grow in other ways.”

  “Richard says you’ve been buying tops and selling them at a competitive price. He says you moved a lot in six weeks.”

  “About a ton,” she answered with unmistakable glee.

  “Who you been selling so much weed to?”

  “Wouldn’t you just love to know,” and, for once, the Southern accent she could easily turn on was thick.

  “Alright. I guess I deserved that. It wasn’t right cutting you out when Alex came to Tucson. Jose gave me a lot of shit about it. But, you’d disappeared for over a week. And I just didn’t think you were, well, you know … serious …”

  “About you?”

  “About working.”

  “About you,” Kathy insisted.

  “Tell me how can you sell pot at that price.”

  “The weed was good. We started low, but in the end, the quality allowed the price to rise. I took a chance, and it worked.”

  She had heard from Marcie that he’d sold very little to the Bay in four weeks, everyone excited about the new pounds of buds.

  “You’re forcing me to lower my prices.”

  “Or improve the quality of what you sell.”

  “Why don’t you come back and be my lady, and we can work together?”

  “Paper, Señor?” A kid about ten years old held a stack of newspapers.

  “Kathy, throw him a few pesos, will you?”

  Larry glanced at the headline … and caught his breath. Then he looked at the date. “This is two weeks old. While we were lying on the beach, we’ve forgotten the rest of the world.”

  “What is it?” she asked, watching him read quickly down the page, his face pinched in concentration.

  “Here. Read it yourself.”

  “No … no!” she cried, scanning the headline and quickly reading through the article. “Martin Luther King’s been assassinated! Oh, my God, someone killed him!”

  Several times she opened her mouth to say something, to tell him how Dr. King’s inspiration had moved her to action, how he had been a source of her political courage. Suddenly, it was all there, rushing into memory with all the force of a sledgehammer’s blow. The nights at LSU when she and Marcie had feared to walk home alone. The telephone hate calls. The threats and obscenities. The looks of sheer loathing as she walked the picket lines. Distorted, twisted faces and jeers. The heart-thumping fear she’d felt as she stepped forward to do the right thing.

  From the time she’d heard Dr. King’s words after the little girls had been killed in the Birmingham church bombing, she had followed him. He had counseled peace even in that terrible soul-wrenching tragedy. What he had done and said on that occasion, this loving soul in a body with black skin, this man of God with a mighty vision for the future, everything, everything, had been absolutely true. The dream he’d envisioned had become the dream of millions. With tremendous courage, knowing he might not ever make it to the other side, he’d stood tall and strong and shown the way.

  She could only stare at Larry, then to the sea, her own eyes filled with salt tears.

  Larry took the paper from her, still reading. “There are riots in a hundred US cities. Twenty blocks have been burned in Chicago. Nine people have been killed.”

  “Larry, what are we doing? How can we be here when the bombs are still dropping? While there is still so much work to do?”

  “We’ll leave tomorrow,” he answered. “You’re right. It’s time to get back to work.”

  RICHARD AND MARCIE

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  JUNE 1968

  Richard sat on the old over-stuffed couch in the living room of his new home in the Berkeley hills and rubbed his hand over the head of his baby. John Blake Harrison was still so small that he fit easily into the center of the receiving blanket. Named after John Muir and William Blake, the baby had weighed in at seven pounds on the brilliant May day he was born.

  The birth, its sacredness, the frightening battle with pain, the line between life and death, was still with Richard even after weeks had passed. Touching his son now, he remembered how Marcie had labored through each intensifying contraction, tired, staring at him with exhaustion, her face beaded with sweat, her hair wet. He had searched frantically around the room for a way to help her, until finally, turning toward the window, he’d ripped open the curtains and cried, “Look! Our child will be born just as the sun gives birth to the new day!”

  The extra energy of a brightening sky pushed her over the top, and in the next instant, demanding that Richard come back to her side, she had given three tremendous pushes, and John had been born into Richard’s hands.

  In the expectant, astonished joy filling that space, the mid-wife had cleared the baby’s mouth, and Richard had heard the first bold cry of his son, a great wail that had started his lungs and kept them pumping. His own breath had escaped in a sigh, his tears uncontrolled, as he’d looked into John’s face for the first time. Suddenly, he was laughing through the tears, looking into Marcie’s eyes, and placing the newborn on her abdomen so that he might cut the cord.

  For a moment, he’d forgotten the other people in the room—Kathy holding Marcie’s hand and wiping her brow through the labor, Merlin and Greta sitting with them through the many hours, praying with a quiet om—but suddenly, there was Kathy, kneeling next to him, an arm around his shoulders, her own tears springing from some great well of human understanding. Together, he and Kathy had joined hands to hold the scissors that would make the cut setting John on his own.

  “Oh, Marcie, he’s so beautiful!” Greta had cried.

  Once the baby had been washed and swaddled, Richard sat next to Marcie for a long time, his chest puffed up, feeling proud, and savoring the tender expression on Marcie’s face as she’d looked from him to the baby suckling at her breast.

  This is my trust, he’d thought overwhelmed. My family.

  About a month later, when things had formed something of a routine, they had made another change and moved from the communal house in Fairfax to Berkeley. Richard wanted to concentrate on the acid scene flourishing around the university. The house he chose was in the Berkeley Hills—stucco, built in the 1930s, with large rooms and hardwood floors, a roof of red terracotta tiles, and a garage off to one side.

  Soon after, David and Michelle had followed. David had suggested that crossing the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge was becoming tedious; Richard was sure David would lose his license if he received another speeding ticket racing across the bridge. Michelle had just given birth to a daughter, and she and Marcie wanted the children to know each other.

  Within a few weeks, Kevin and Debbie also had made the leap to Berkeley.

  With Kathy already settled into a small bungalow-style house on College Avenue near the campus, everyone was once again living within a few minutes of each other.

  But Merlin and Greta had chosen to move north, to Humboldt County.

  Merlin leaving? Richard had wondered, stunned. How can he? He understands what’s at stake. What we’re trying to do. I depend on him. Alex is my right hand, Merlin, my left.

  “Is it money?” he’d asked. “I should have talked to you sooner. Do you want a partnership in the business?”

  Merlin shook his head. “To be honest, I’m tired of the hassles and the paranoia.”

  So you’re just giving up, Richard had thought with some bitterness. Running away.

  “I love you, Richard, and I know your dream,” Merlin explained. “The commitment you’ve made to one day producing really good L. But I want to raise my kid in a safe space. Grow a garden. Eat organic food. I want to live in the fresh air. Get high. Live high.”

  “You have enough money?”

  “Enough for the down payment on a piece of property and then some. We’ll be alright until I can think of a new way to make bucks. C
an you understand that I’m tired of talking about the kind of life we want to create? Watching John’s birth convinced me of the reality of what we’re living, how fragile life and death are. If I don’t take this step now, then when?”

  Richard had tried to pull together all his emotions. “I wish I could go with you … just put it all aside … but I have too many obligations. If you ever need work, let me know.”

  Richard shook away the frustration the memory still held for him and once again lightly touched the top of John’s head. Beside him was an envelope containing the pictures of his wedding to Marcie. He smiled thinking of how paranoid everyone had been as the camera went clicking away. Too bad—Marcie had wanted pictures, and he’d decided she would have them.

  Marcie had always been beautiful, he mused, studying the image in his hand, but never had she been more beautiful than on this day. For a long moment, he could not put the photo down. Her face was radiant, her eyes misty and filled with light. Her hair fell in long crimped waves to her waist, dark against the white cotton wedding dress, her belly large and round and her lips as red as the flowers on the neckline of the dress Debbie had embroidered. In her hair, she wore a crown of white roses interlaced with ferns.

  The next picture was of Kathy standing next to her in a long empire dress made of light blue velveteen, pink and red roses woven into her hair.

  In fact, most of the women, and many of the men, had worn flowers.

  Danny was among them. Here he was in a photo with a flower behind his ear. Along with blue jeans and cowboy boots and a beaded Indian belt.

  But not Kevin. Richard grinned as he glanced at the next picture. Kevin had his own fantasy going. He’d chosen an eighteenth century brocaded jacket with ruffled shirt and cuffs. All that was missing was the powdered wig. In the photo, he was in a philosophical argument with David, the costume lending him an aristocratic manner. David, on the other hand, had dressed in Edwardian black, a white cravat tied at his throat, a glass of champagne in his hand, his face pinched in serious contemplation. In the next photo, Debbie stood with her arms around them both, posing for the camera, wearing one of the beautiful dresses she had hand embroidered, the three laughing hysterically at some joke probably long forgotten by now.

  Richard glanced up at the wall and studied the painting Kevin had generously given to them as a wedding gift. The color leapt off the wall, the paint reaching into the room in layered colors, forming a three-dimensional visual. Back in 1967, the first time he had entered Kevin’s home, he’d almost taken a step back, as if the room had shouted at him. The walls of his apartment were covered in his canvases, political posters, and psychedelic art. The back room had been turned into a studio and was filled with unfinished works on several easels. He sighed, slightly shaking his head, wondering how Kevin’s view of the world generated such enormous talent.

  Returning to the pictures in his hand, he looked down to see another of David. In this image, he was scamming on a friend of Mary Ann’s, and Michelle was caught just in the background, very pregnant, her face sad and resigned at his continuous public philandering.

  Larry and Carolyn had flown in from Arizona, Carolyn quiet, apparently not too happy about Kathy’s trip to Mexico with Larry. Once, he had come upon Kathy explaining to Marcie why she thought Carolyn’s attitude ridiculous, but as he’d approached, both women had gone silent. It was something else, the way they could be talking a mile a minute, and as soon as you walked over, there was nothing they could find to say.

  Jose had come with a young Indian woman. He held up the picture and grinned. Jet-black hair, parted in the middle, falling below her waist. Long beaded earrings set against her hair. Dark eyes, light brown skin, tiny frame. A beaded choker necklace. Danny had her against a tree, leaning over, one hand on the branch over her head, charming to the end.

  In the next image, Miguel and Rosie from the Tucson ranch stood together near the punch bowl looking so stoned that they could barely open their eyes. Richard was still trying to figure out just who’d dosed the bowl, but no one would cop to it yet. So many people had already dropped that day that it hardly made a difference, but still, it was all pretty loose.

  Or maybe it was Kathy’s cake, he thought, looking at the next shot, a cake covered in whipped cream and strawberries, with a little bride and groom on the top, the inside layers bright green from finely screened marijuana mixed into the flour.

  Moving to the next photo, Richard grimaced. A picture of the wedding party, himself and Marcie, Kathy and Alex, Merlin and Greta, and at this point everyone was trying to smile. Alex had been so jealous of the marriage that he’d gone out of his way to try to ruin the day. Richard had even felt it necessary to say they would always be friends, that Alex would always be a part of his life.

  Sure, he had expected that Alex would have some conflict with Kathy, a moment’s awkwardness. It was the first time they’d met since that day in the garage when she’d pulled fifty keys from the load. Kathy had tried to make light of it, apologizing for the mix-up. But Richard had not anticipated the response, not on his wedding day. Alex had turned to her, the gleam of mixed madness and distaste in his eyes, “Looks like we’re straight now, huh?”

  At that moment, Richard knew. Knew Alex had played him in getting his approval to do that deal with Larry. An emotion hit him that was not often a part of his makeup. Shame. And it shook him. Stunned, he’d remembered a few other questionable deals Alex had suggested. Alex was his partner, his brother. Yet … just how far could he trust him? Marcie had gently placed a hand on his arm to remind him that Alex wasn’t himself; instead, it was the Angel Dust, the PCP, he was using with such regularity.

  Angel Dust. At first, everyone thought it was another sacrament and welcomed it into the scene. But now Richard wasn’t so sure. Alex had lost it that day, blabbering to everyone about everything and nothing, in one moment explaining a part of life with depth and awareness, yet in the next, he was wild, crazy, flailing his arms to make his point, spouting jumbled trivia.

  The next picture showed Felix stepping out of his Porsche—Felix, the lead guitarist for Electric Reason. Richard shook his head again. Felix had been almost as bad as Alex. He’d smoked a little, but beyond that, Richard remembered him popping pills and snorting powders frequently during the day. He never quite got it straight what Felix was stoned on. But the music he’d played through the ceremony on his acoustic guitar had added a sense of tenderness to the day.

  As he moved through the photos, he was struck by a hundred memories from the last year and a half, from the time he’d met Marcie—for that is where time began. All the old crowd from the Ashbury Street house was there: Honey and Ellen, Michael and his old lady and a few people from the Michigan family they’d established, Mary Ann and Keith, others. Lots of little hippie kids were now part of the Tribe, some running naked, the older girls in long dresses, the boys with wild free-flowing hair.

  New people, too, had been invited, like Peter. Richard touched the picture, and suddenly looked into the future. Peter was Kevin’s connection from Canada. Too much champagne and Peter had let slip that he had an ergotamine connection, the base needed for making lysergic acid, and—stoned or not—Richard had the presence of mind to get Peter’s phone number.

  But what does Kathy know about Peter that I don’t?

  Sometime during the afternoon, she and Peter had disappeared from the party into the countryside. Kevin had paced with a good deal of apprehension while they were gone, grumbling. Kathy worked too hard, he had mumbled, and had a way of putting things together just like a dude. In fact, she was expecting a load of Afghani soon at the same price he’d been given. How could she be that close to the source?

  Base. Ergotamine. If Richard could get that base, he was one step closer to putting together the lab he dreamed of having.

  At the next picture, he laughed aloud. The minister from the Universal Life Church had taken a step, and everything underneath his dark kimono and between his legs was
available for anyone to see.

  Then there were the photos of the ceremony—Alex and Merlin standing next to him, Kathy and Greta next to Marcie. Marcie’s face again, the way she looked only at him. The small altar covered with a white tablecloth and flowers, rising incense, a small Buddha. The words from The Prophet on marriage. The reading from the I Ching on wooing: “To take a maiden to wife brings good fortune.” Marcie’s poem—startling, because it had been a long time since she’d written anything. He’d forgotten the extent of her talent, the way she could use images, her astonishing flow and rhythm. Their kiss at the end. The circle of friends closing around to wish them every happiness.

  Ah! Richard held the last of the pictures. The helicopter! How paranoid everyone had been when it arrived, hovering overhead! Even he had thought they were being busted. But flowers had started to fall from the sky, and David had called, “Happy wedding!”

  Suddenly, someone was leaning hard against the door buzzer.

  Speak of the devil, Richard smiled, and he appears. That has to be David—forty minutes late, as usual.

  The buzzer sounded long and hard again. Richard put the pictures back in the envelope, turned John on his tummy, and covered him. From the window facing the front door, he checked his doorstep. David stood in a dark leather jacket, looking impatient.

  “Hey, man. What’s happening?” Richard asked, opening the door.

  “Plenty,” David answered, bursting into the room, filling it with himself. “I had a visit last night.”

  Richard’s heart skipped a beat as he watched David anxiously take out a joint and light it. “The Man came to your door?”

  “No.” David shook his head. “Not the Man. Biker types. Maybe Angels.”

  “A rip-off?”

  “A friend of a friend in the Haight got a pistol shoved into his face Tuesday night. Two guys in leather jackets and motorcycle boots. Asked him who he was copping acid from. Told him they’d blow his head off if he didn’t tell them. What’s the dude to do, right? He just shook and gave them my friend’s name and how to find him. Wednesday, my friend got picked up in a car, driven around, and punched out. They asked him the same questions. Who are you copping from, and where does he live? With a pistol to his head and his teeth halfway down his throat, he told them.”