“What did you do there, Phil? Oh, good Lord, you stepped in cowshit. Walk around, scrape it off. Walk around on the grass. Or maybe not. You’ll just step in more. Well, don’t get back in the car with those shoes on. Take them off. You can drive barefoot. You’re from Florida. You all live barefoot down there on the beach.”
Marshall unlocked a storage shed. “This is where I keep my past,” he said. He pulled a string and a lightbulb popped on. The shed was filled with boxes and file cabinets. He patted his breast pockets. “Lord, give me sight,” he said. He found his reading glasses and put them on, balancing the bridge halfway down his nose. They made him look like a grandmother. “Let me think”—he put a finger up to his lips—“because I had a system at one point.” He turned in place, reached for a file drawer, and yanked it open. He took one look and said, “No.” He pushed the drawer shut. “Unfortunately, I think what we’re searching for is in the era of boxes, or things I wouldn’t mind being vanquished in a nuclear holocaust.” He dragged a stack of boxes out to the center of the dirt floor. From one of them he pulled out an old spiral-bound address book. “I should put all of this on a computer somewhere. One of the many projects I’ll never get to.” He flipped through the pages. “People who might have known one Eric Piper.” He licked a finger and turned a page of the book.
“Do you remember a girl named Eden?” I asked.
“Eden,” he said closing his little black book on his lap and folding his hands on top of it like a napkin. “Yes, she was very smart. Very attractive, though I made no forays there. Eric had a coterie of young women flitting about. Usually they didn’t stay long. The serious ones did, though. Eden. You know, I think she and Eric were lovers. Have you tracked her down?”
I said I hadn’t, that he was the first one I found. He smiled. “It was that article,” he said. “Sometimes I wish that magazine editor had never stopped into that café. Anonymity is precious these days. I’m afraid what you’ve chosen to research is rather difficult. It was the last era when people could vanish. The last era in which anyone considered vanishing. People are terrified to be alone now. Even if you decide to live isolated and off the grid, you’ve got to have some blog about it.”
Marshall gave me some names and what he thought were probably outdated phone numbers. “Do be careful,” he said. “There were some people who were involved in”—he twirled his hand in the air above his head—“drugs, and I imagine other things that might walk the blurry line of legality. Best wishes for tracking down the story,” he said and shook my hand, and I left him there under the bare bulb of the shed.
I drove south and pulled The Camper into a motel parking lot. It was late and the motel office was dark. I didn’t want to spend the money for a room anyway. I closed all the curtains in The Camper and climbed into the way-back with a flashlight and a pocket knife.
Everything you need is always right there in front of you. That’s what Cortland used to say in playwriting class when someone was stuck. “Nine times out of ten,” he said, “you don’t have to create anything new. It is all already there.”
I called Zara and asked her if she could find me some information online because I was in the middle of nowhere. “As long as it’s legal,” she said, “since you’re calling me on a cell phone.” Zara was paranoid about surveillance. At various points in her academic and artistic careers she had been approached by “government security assholes” and “corporate black-ops types,” both of which, she said, were looking to earn double points by recruiting women into the industry. Their appearances had leveled off since her mental health issues had been publicized by her gallerist, but they still showed up every now and then at a Q&A and would try to chat her up afterward. “One guy went so far as to try and seduce me. Literally,” she said.
I asked her to look up a few names Marshall had given me. She could only find the email address for one person, a guy named Ron Sandy. I wrote to him on my phone. I said I was looking for a girl named Eden or anyone who knew her. She lived in a sort of commune with an older guy named Eric. And a person named Chrissy. That they were friends with a doctor named Marshall.
TO: Hope
FROM: Ron Sandy
Sure. I knew some of those people. I don’t know any of them now. They were going for their chance at Utopia, trying to figure shit out. But like all human attempts at mimicking paradise, eventually it fails and everyone gets kicked out. It was great while it lasted, but it didn’t last long. Like I said, I don’t know any of them now. If they’re not dead, I wish them well.
Mostly I knew Eric. Eric the Pied Piper. Eden was his girlfriend. Real good-looking. Don’t know how he managed that one because I wouldn’t call Eric a handsome fella. I had a house a couple miles from their place. Forget how I first met Eric, but he made himself known. Always propositioning favors. He used people. Like for instance, he would come over to my house, take a dump, leave. I live out in the country. I don’t always lock the door. Sometimes you would come home to that in progress. Or unfinished. Or unflushed. Can’t say it was pleasant. He preferred my place to do his business because his place was a shithole.
Also, Eric liked me because my aunt owned a diner and I would help out there sometimes. At the end of the day we had to throw out all the bread and other stuff the health department keeps tabs on. I hooked it all up. Told my aunt it was for my friends who volunteered helping homeless people. I didn’t tell her that my friends actually were the homeless people. That all worked until she died and my asshole cousin took over. He asked for receipts. Said he wanted a letter from the homeless shelter saying it was a donation for his taxes. I think we doctored one up using a copy machine. That worked until he did his tax return and the H&R Block dude wanted an ID number. Decided he could fire me over that. Cut me off. Three years later he ran the whole place into the ground.
After that, I told Eric, you live on a farm, why don’t you grow your own food. It’s not terribly difficult. But he wasn’t interested. All he and his clique were interested in was The Cause. They liked calling their liberal do-goodery philosophy club The Cause because all the Civil War Daughters of the Confederacy grannies still keep the term alive. Like from Gone with the Wind. “It’s for The Cause.” Scarlett O’Hara said that. I had an uncle who referred to Robert E. Lee as “The Man.” People live in the past. The Cause. Great slogan, actually. So vague it could mean anything. Of course they said “It’s for The Cause” in Gone with the Wind, because they couldn’t say “It’s for preserving slavery, brutality, crimes against humanity, and industrial fascism.” But, wink wink, everyone knew what it was. Even back when I was in school, they taught us that The Cause and the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about “states’ rights.” That’s another beautifully vague term. It can mean whatever you want it to. That’s how advertisers do it. They “just do it.” Get it? Got Milk? Where’s the Beef? It’s all so simple. It has something for everyone. Everyone can have a Coke and a smile. And get out there to be all they can be. We can be heroes just for one day. Eric was big on pointing all that out. He was good at blowing your mind. Good at exploding preconceived beliefs. But he had nothing to patch up the hole.
I drove by one day and they were all gone. Just up and split. Heard Eric was living with an old college buddy who worked for the CIA as an accountant or something. Wouldn’t be surprised if Eric sold out and started working for the CIA too. Might be the reason why he dropped off the face of the planet. Can’t find much of him on the Internet. Never heard from any of them again.
Didn’t surprise me that they pulled the plug on their operation. They were misguided into thinking they could have made a difference with their little Starship Enterprise. America is bogged down with special interest groups and the illuminati. The world is run by powers so big, you and I can’t understand it. These people are corrupt beyond your wildest dreams and they make test-tube babies to carry on their work in future generations. They have an army of them in secret bunkers ready to be shot with sperm and sprung
into action. You and I and everyone we know, we’re just cogs in a wheel. But that’s what people want to be. They want to be told how to live and how to eat and how to fuck, or should I say “make love”? How to invest their sorry little paycheck. How to raise their kids. People want to be subservient to something. Like the Hale-Bopp comet guy who made all his followers castrate themselves and wear purple sneakers. People want to be defined. How do you think the global powers got to where they are in the first place? Everyone thinks they’d never let it happen. Everyone would have fought against the Nazis. Everyone would have hidden Jews in their attic or runaway slaves in the Underground Railroad. Everyone would love their gay son and get up there and rah rah rah with their pink ribbons and red ribbons or whatever the ribbon color du jour is for the social cause du jour. As if tacking a ribbon on your cheap suit does anything. What a load of crap.
Glad I finally figured out the answer, something Eric & Co. was never able to do. It’s a dream, you don’t exist. Clinging and grasping at a transient material world only leads to suffering. It’s all dream dust. Logic and concepts will never take you to understanding because it’s just mucking around in the illusion. We’re all transients. That’s the harsh world of karmic tangles, spiraling forever from one dream world to the next. Doomed to keep repeating the same old story to the same old song.
I sense this is some sort of quest for you, needing some sort of closure. Sorry I can’t be of more help to you, Hope. But keep on keeping on. The best thing you have going for you is your name.
11
I still had my backpack on when Eden and I were riding in the back of the truck. It was sort of uncomfortable, but I worried about crawling around too much while the truck was in motion. It’s not like there were seat belts in the back of the truck. Eden had tossed her backpack into the corner and she didn’t seem to care if it flew out if we happened to whip around a curve. She had her headphones on and her Walkman in her hands, her thumbs resting on the side buttons. I could hear the music escape from the foam cushioning of her headphones. Eden leaned her head back against the truck cab and looked up at the dark sky, immersed in her personal soundtrack to the galaxy. When we stopped at a red light, I inched forward and took off my backpack. I pulled it around in front of me and put it between my legs, holding down one strap with my foot.
The wind lashed my hair around my face. I kept retucking it behind my ears. I wished I had a ponytail holder so it wouldn’t get completely messed up. That’s what I always did in the summer when we went with my mom on the annual eleven-hour drive to Michigan to visit our grandparents. Our car didn’t have air conditioning, so the windows were always rolled down unless it was raining. Eden never seemed to mind. Her hair was long enough and thick enough to be wound in a knot and stay there without barrettes. If it did bother her, she used her headphones as a headband.
We turned off the main road with the strip malls and the big grocery store. We went through a hilly neighborhood of small houses. We passed the big combined junior-senior high school where Eden and I would’ve gone if we lived full-time with our dad.
I thought we were going a different way than my dad usually drove us. We normally passed a gated community called The Pines, which Eden called the Last Outpost of Civilization. Last summer Eden figured out how to sneak into the pool at The Pines. We went there every day until this guy started talking to Eden. He thought she was older than she was. He was trying to pick her up. It went on until a lady and her kids came by and saw that this guy wasn’t leaving us alone, and she decided to get involved. She asked if he was bothering us. Eden didn’t say anything, so the woman asked if he was bothering me. I said, “He’s kind of being weird and he always does this.” “Does what?” she asked. “Talks to us,” I said. “Inappropriately?” she asked me, quietly, so he couldn’t hear. “It’s just weird. It’s not really a big deal,” I said. The guy said, “Hey, I live here, I pay my HOA fees, I can use the pool and sit where I want, no one’s bothering anyone.” The woman said to us, “What’s your house number? I want to talk to your parents about what’s going on.” Eden got up with her towel and walked away and I had to follow her. We didn’t go back there anymore. Eden never said anything to me about it except “I could’ve handled it,” as we walked back to our dad’s that day.
The truck slowed down and wound through curvy side streets lined with little box houses that all looked like they had been built at the same time. And then the houses got farther and farther apart and we were out in the country. We pulled into a driveway and then off the paved part and onto the back lawn. I looked at Eden. She pressed the STOP button on her Walkman and scooted to the foot of the truck bed. Larry got out of the cab. “Come on in,” he said and headed to the back-door steps without checking to see if we were following him or not.
Eden and I walked into his kitchen. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. Everything was kind of run-down. The linoleum kitchen counters were stained with coffee cup rings. There was a bag of trash tied up on the floor next to the garbage can that was leaking something brown onto the floor. A box of Trix cereal sat on top of the garbage can lid. I was hungry. We hadn’t eaten dinner and I actually liked eating cereal for dinner if my mom wasn’t cooking because she was teaching a class that night. There was usually plenty of stuff for me and Eden to cook, or there were always burritos or Stouffer’s French-bread pizzas in the freezer that we could microwave, but on those nights I usually ate cereal. My mom never bought Trix. I only ate it when I used to go to slumber parties at other people’s houses when I was younger.
Larry switched on the lights in the living room. “Make yourself at home,” he said. Eden plopped down on the couch and put a foot up on Larry’s coffee table. Larry went back into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “You girls drink beer?” he asked. “You want one?” “Yeah, I’ll have one,” Eden said. I gave Eden a look that meant, What are you doing, you shouldn’t drink beer with this guy. But Eden ignored me. She surveyed the room, which was just the crappy couch and crappy coffee table and two old grandpa-style recliners. A mirror with Budweiser etched into it hung above the fireplace. There was a china cabinet that fit into a corner and was filled with porcelain Disney figurines, the kind you see advertised in the back pages of Parade. You have to cut out the little coupon and mail in a check. Or subscribe and get the first doll free and then they send you one a month unless you remember to cancel your subscription, but everyone always forgets, and then you get all those dolls and a big bill. My friends and I would do the same thing with the eight-CDs-for-a-penny Columbia House Record Club, but you have to remember to cancel your membership or you end up with a bunch of stuff you don’t want and you have to pay full price. I once saw Layla at school filling out the mail-in form and choosing a lot of Christian rock. She wrote in the name and address of a girl she was mad at.
Larry came back slurping a beer and slinging two more cans hanging off a six-pack plastic ring. He dangled the cans in front of Eden’s face, his finger stretching out the plastic loop. He stood there for a bit, waiting to see if Eden would reach out for it, but Eden never fell for stuff like that. She hated games. She didn’t like playing along with things. Larry smiled. He lowered his arm and let the beers land on the coffee table and sat down on one of the recliners. Eden leaned forward and pulled out one of the beers. “Your sister can have one too,” Larry said. “No drinking age here.” I had drunk beer before, but I said, “No thanks.” I knew my dad would be pissed off if he found me and Eden drinking beer with his friend. Also, if Larry was supposed to drive us to our dad’s, now he was drinking, so now he shouldn’t drive, and now we were stuck here. Or maybe this was always the plan. Our dad was going to pick us up from Larry’s. Or Luce was. Since our dad now didn’t have a working car.
“Are we waiting here?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Larry said. “You’re waiting here.”
“Shouldn’t we call Luce?” I asked Eden quietly.
Eden popped open her beer. “She knows to come
,” she said.
“Tell you what,” Larry said. “You seem like liberal-leaning folk.” He got up and rummaged around in a corner behind his recliner. He pulled out a bong and a plastic zipper-lock bag. “TGIF, am I right?”
“So true,” Eden said.
“True ee-nough,” Larry said. He packed the bong with pot from the plastic bag. “Wait, I have ladies here. This demands some hygiene.” He went into the bathroom and returned with a streamer of toilet paper. He wiped the rim of the bong and then dropped the toilet paper on the floor. “You know how to use it?” he asked Eden.
Eden picked up the bong and set it on the crappy coffee table while she dug into her backpack for a lighter. Eden seemed perfectly at ease in this situation, but it was making me nervous. It wasn’t like we were at a party. It wasn’t like we were over at someone’s house while their parents were working the night shift or out of town. In the eighth grade, I always hung out at my friend Ellie’s house because her mom worked for the local TV station’s news program and her shift was the eleven o’clock news, so she never got home before one a.m. Sometimes Ellie would make us rum and Cokes from the liquor cabinet, but it was kind of boring. I never understood drinking if you were just going to watch TV. It seemed better if there were more people around.
Eden held the base of the bong between her knees, leaned over, and sucked on the tube. It gurgled from deep in her lap. She sat up and passed it back to Larry. She exhaled the smoke in a long, ruffly current and then lit up one of her cloves. The familiar perfume wafted out of her mouth. We are going to get in so much trouble, I thought. I didn’t know why Eden wanted to hang out with Larry like this. I thought he was pretty gross. He must be one of those guys who doesn’t have a real job and is always hanging around and that’s why my dad called him because he couldn’t get in touch with anyone else. Larry didn’t seem like he would be friends with my dad. He was more like a guy who fixed things. Sometimes my dad hung out with those guys and acted like they were his friends even though they were so different because my dad had gone to college and been a journalist and now taught at a college. But usually it was my dad hanging out with them at a bar and playing darts. Or a few of them were on his Frisbee golf team. He never invited them over to his house. Or if he did invite them, they never came.
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