After an initial period of revulsion, I began not to mind having strangers—none of my responsibility—around me. And, finally, I rather enjoyed it.
The other regulars?
Well, there’s this chick, Katie-Mary. She’s weird. Always spouting about Doing Her Thing. And keeping her area of floor on the chick side clean—bone clean—clear down to the grain of the shreddy old boards. Even to pushing and scraping out the long gray plugs of dirt and fuzz that took years to petrify between the planks. So when it’s windy, the draft comes up through all those emptinesses from the crawl space under the joint and sets the edges of her blankets rippling all around her. She nearly froze last winter. The rippling scared another steady chick, Doos, into screaming half of one night because she could see the Serpent undulating around Katie-Mary—The Rosy Serpent of Contemplation who is unique among serpents in that he has a navel. But Katie-Mary’d get up each morning, stiff with the cold, and work up a sweat scrubbing her bit of floor again.
She had to carry the water from outside—no plumbing. There’s a handpump standing up on a bare pipe in the back yard. We wrap it with burlap when freezing time comes—if we remember. And there’s two out-houses—male and female, created we them.
Sometimes we’re crowded—but Katie-Mary’s not. We shove over and make room, but no one wants to step into that tawny white rectangle of Katie-Mary’s. Which brings up another bit that bugs the transients. We operate dormwise—segregated. No cohabiting. Weird, man, weird!
Well, to get on, some night last spring, this dude came roaring in on his chopper. Young kid—the whole cycle bit—black leather, spaceman helmet, the kind that reflects so you can’t see through it. Kinda filled the joint that first night, you know? There you’d be, rapping with someone, and there he’d be, listening like—like—well, like a thirsty guy drinks. But some of the congregation began to get real uptight, and he nearly got clobbered a couple of times—just for listening. But remember, his listening was like the sucking of a vacuum. Finally I decided I’d better point out to him the error of his ways, not wanting open warfare. I stopped at his shoulder—and for a minute there I thought I was having a delayed replay of a bad trip. It was like—like, well, like a drift of Something curling around the cerebellum, poking in long question marks and raking at the roots of me, trying to find—to know—
Then he grinned at me lazylike over his shoulder and said, “Yeah, I’ll cool it, Frederic—no open warfare.”
And he went looking for a place to doss down, while I stood blinking, wondering, my unused words drying my mouth out, hearing my right name for the first time since—
He ended up in what used to be a pantry, barely large enough to lie down in, and you’d rap your knuckles on two walls if you stretched too quickly.
“Central,” he answered—before I asked. “Easy reaching.”
I thought he’d be long gone come morning, but he wasn’t. He stayed—a dropout.
He never had much to say, but there seemed always to be someone rapping with him. His thing was listening, except it seemed to me that his listening was asking. He was a Hunter, too, a Waiter. But sometimes he’d break in and start asking questions, out loud. But, then, he wasn’t the Listener any more. So the other dude—or chick, maybe—’d split, and the Listener would roar off on that Pollution Producer (Noise) and manage to come back sometime after the last candle or lamp—no electricity—was doused, without waking me. And I’m a light sleeper.
Don’t know the rationale, but there for a while several months ago, we were bulging. Must have been a wholesale migration to the Coast—maybe the lemming syndrome?
The pump in the yard squeaked at all hours. There were lines forming to the two-holer outhouses. Matches flared fitfully from every corner.
Candles, sure! But this lamp bit! Lookit the damn thing smoke! Yiy! That glass thing’s hot! Hey, it does give light! What they won’t think of next!
Separate? Man, I can’t sleep without my old lady! I mean, like the eyes won’t close—
Happy insomnia. My thing is running this joint—the way I want to. You’re free to split.
Yeah. Free. The next pad eighty miles down the pike!
So, for a while there, the joint filled and emptied like it was breathing, and the slotted box by the front door filled and emptied too. Bread stacked up until I thought maybe of electricity—but unthought it in a hurry. First thing I knew about Katie-Mary’s trip was in the lovely lull after all the crowdedness. Guesky, another stayer—ostensibly, his thing is contemplating, which looks on him about the same as sleeping, if you ask me. I think his real thing is seeing how little activity he can get along with, this side of dying. So it was a real departure for him to climb all the way up to my pad in the unfinished attic that spread blankly across the top of the whole house, dust undisturbed except immediately around me. He nudged me awake with his foot. He sleeps on a bench. Can’t get up and down good enough for the floor. His meat’s in his way.
“Hey, man—shake it!” he said. “Katie-Mary’s back. Got back’s evening. Man, she had a bad trip. Still freakin’ out. She’s down there shrieking and hammering the floor. Doos don’t wanta touch her. Says she sees alienation all around her—”
“Nothing I can do,” I yawned, scratching me where the blankets had been scratching too long.
“Stop her mouth or something,” said Guesky, “till she shakes the trip.”
“What she on?” I asked. “I thought her thing was the next-to-godliness bit—”
“No, man, you ain’t with it!” Guesky’s voice squeaked. “She split. She traveled. She went off with some dude after he ran her down in town with his wheels. She split, man. She—was—gone! Now she’s back, shrieking and hammering the floor.”
“Better the Listener than me,” I said, sliding back under my blanket, cradling the back of my head on my bent elbow. “Katie-Mary and I, we don’t jibe. She’s always expecting me to expect her to expect me to make a pass at her. Better the Listener.”
So Guesky went away and I shut my eyes. But they didn’t stay shut. What was bugging Katie-Mary? She was usually fairly unflappable.
Finally I rolled over until my ear felt the chill of the metal grating set in my floor. It was above one in the ceiling of the chicks’ dorm. No, you can’t see down through it. Dirt, dust, cobwebs, and a four-inch offset between gratings, that’s why. But if Guesky had brought the Listener instead of taking Katie-Mary—He had.
Katie-Mary’s voice was the only one I heard. The Listener was The Compleat Listener.
“... wasn’t hurt but it shook him so bad that I took him to Harmon Park until he got his cool back. He said he wasn’t used to driving. ‘Not on streets,’ he said!” Katie-Mary’s voice was rising and thinning. “ ‘And you don’t meet many pedestrians above the trees!’
“That started it,” said Katie-Mary. “That hooked me. I hung around wondering how long he could keep up a line like that. He asked me again if I was hurt, and I told him again he’d only nudged me, not even to push me off my feet. He was so relieved, he began to talk—like, man! talk! Sometimes he’d pull up and look sorry for something he’d told, but off he’d go again.
“Seems like he’d left his People. No, not a runaway. They gave him the car and what I suppose was the local equivalent of their blessing. Old. The car was old. But it ran brand new. He liked my talk about doing your thing and letting others do theirs.
“ ‘I told them,’ he said, so pleased! ‘I told them no one minded anymore. Nobody’d care if I forgot and—and lifted instead of walking—or—other—little—things—like—that.’ ” Katie-Mary was having trouble with her articulation and voice modulation. There was a gasping silence; then her voice squealed hysterically.
“You think he was putting me on? Man, are you ever wrong! Did you know he didn’t buy drop one of gas for that weird set of wheels of his the whole time he was in town. He laughed when I asked him about it. ‘Oh, I don’t need gas. I just lift the car so there’s just enough pressur
e to make the wheels turn. Of course, I do have to let the motor make enough noise to be convincing.’ ” Katie-Mary sobbed noisily, then gulped and went on.
“He was so pleased to hear anyone could do anything any more and not—not—oh, I said that! But he was. Seems like his People—it sounds like a commune, but it isn’t. I saw—anyway, they’ve always been out of step with everyone—all of them. And uptight about letting anyone know. He—what? Oh, his name’s Degal—no, just Degal. I never asked.
“ ‘It’s a good joke on the People,’ he told me once, like as if his People were the only people around. ‘They think they’re so different, and all along—wait until I tell them! You do have Sensitives, don’t you?’
“ ‘What’s that?’ I asked.
“ ‘Oh, you know. Maybe you call them something else. You know—to touch the suffering—to read the reason for pain and illness. To go in. To heal.’
“ ‘Man, you’ve flipped!’ I told him. ‘This faith-healing bit. Well, sure, if you go for that kind—’ But he looked at me—” Katie-Mary’s voice faltered. I barely could hear her when she spoke again, small and soft and wondering. “Then I felt him in my mind—asking—asking—hoping. Then he was gone—disappointed—still wanting to hope. Some way—some way I’d failed.
“ ‘Some of our People,’ he said in a hurry, I guess, to comfort me, ‘have been so closed for so long that they find it hard to open to anyone, too. I’m sorry.’
“No,” Katie-Mary said to a murmur. “Not all at one time. Oh, a month or six weeks. Little bits and pieces at different times. He’s so young—oh, older than I am, but so young—so new—” Tears were gone from her voice but not the wonder.
“I asked him once where he came from. ‘From the Home,’ he said. ‘Orphan’s home?’ I asked. He laughed. ‘No! From the Home! Of course, I didn’t. I was born on Earth, in the Canyon, but my grandfather—’ Get this, man ‘—my grandfather was one who came to Earth from the Home.’ ‘How?’ I asked. He said, like wondering why I’d ask something so plain, ‘Why, in the ship, of course. At the Crossing!’
“That did it,” said Katie-Mary. “Flying saucers yet. ‘What you on?’ I asked him. ‘On?’ he asked, then waited a minute and laughed. ‘I don’t need to be on anything to get high. Watch this!’ ”
Katie-Mary’s voice faltered. “I didn’t want to watch after the first little bit. I—I was afraid. I couldn’t understand. I thought maybe I was out of my skull. But I kept looking—
“We were down by the river, at the bend, one night. A bright night. He told me the moon was poured out on the water, and it looked like it. Well, he shot up into the air over the river like a rocket. Then up there above the shining water, above the shadowy trees, he—he—you know? like those gymnasts at the Olympics—on TV—only not held down. No danger of falling. No sweat. Easy—fast—like a wingless bird. Like a jet gone mad. When he came down with a swoosh, laughing and panting and saying, ‘That’s the kind of high—’ he found me huddled and scared under the trees, and he stopped smiling. He—he patted my shoulder. He said he was sorry. That he shoulda known I didn’t mean a physical high—
“No!” Katie-Mary’s voice lifted. “No—not anything! You know I wasn’t! I don’t, ever! He did! He—he flew—he did! He did!
“Then what? Then he asked me to split with him. To go meet his People. To prove to them that they didn’t need to keep being isolated any more. That it was time for them to move out into society and share all their Gifts and Persuasions—”
I heard Katie-Mary squeal, “Don’t—don’t! You’re hurting me!”
And the Listener with rough anger in a voice I hadn’t heard enough really to know: “You’re—putting—me—on!” He grated. “Who clued you? Who told—!”
“No!” Katie-Mary squealed again. “Nobody—!”
“Sorry.” The Listener’s voice really was. “Forget it. Just forget it—”
I heard Katie-Mary’s wail cut off in the middle of a word. I was about to scramble out of the sack when I heard her ask blankly, “Where was I?”
“He asked you to split—” prompted the Listener.
“Yeah, he did,” said Katie-Mary. She sighed a long sigh as though she’d never breathe in again. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Yes,” said the Listener. “Tell and it’ll be gone.”
“It was at night.” Her voice was very quick and tiptoey, as though she was afraid she’d break through into something. “It was at night or I’d have flipped completely. We—we never touched a tire to a road. We never saw a road after we left town. I pried my eyes open once and saw mountains streaming by under us—way, way under us—like a jaggedy river streaked with white foam. And all the time he jabbered on and on with that space opera of his about the Home and the—the Crossing and—well, I stopped listening. I wanted out. I wanted out bad. I shivered and he—he smiled and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’ And the car got warm! All around. Softly, gently—lovingly—”
Katie-Mary’s voice slowed and faltered. “Oh, can’t you see?” she cried passionately. “Can’t you understand? I haven’t told you everything! I haven’t told you all the bits and pieces Degal told me that kept fitting together and getting clearer and clearer until that night, when he finally shouted, ‘There!’ and the car tilted and swooshed down like—like an eagle—and I saw his People coming up for him, pale faces way down there, streaming up to meet him in the air. And the car door opening to let him shoot out into all kinds of happy surroundings like Arms, and Love and Returning and—and the car drifted down, tilting back and forth like a dry leaf, the left door flapping open and shut, open and shut. And me tick-tocking back and forth inside the car, hanging on for dear life, while outside—
“I was outside that beautiful world—Degal’s Home—that he thought wasn’t so much different from the way the world is now. Oh, brother!
“I reached over and flipped on the car lights. As the car swung, the lights swept back and forth across treetops and the happy chattering group darting around like big hummingbirds, clustering around Degal.
“You know what those car lights looked like to me all at once? Do you know?” She was crying again, her voice choked.
“ ‘And he placed at the east of the Garden,’ ” the Listener said slowly, “ ‘a flaming sword which turned every way to keep—’ ”
“To keep me out,” said Katie-Mary. “Oh, I walked in, all right. I met them all. I met Valancy and Jemmy—they’re the Wheels. And Robelyn—that girl with the big eyes, all for Degal—and all those cunning little kids learning to fly across the creek. One of them fell in when she forgot how halfway across. They pulled her out and hugged her and teased her and gave her a goodie to stop her tears. The goodie was a fruit that made music when she took a bit of it. Her teeth were crimson from the juice when she giggled.
“I was there for—well, I can’t tell you how long. One night I didn’t sleep for wondering what I’d got into. Another night I leaned on the windowsill and watched Degal and that Robelyn up against the moon and the treetops doing a sort of wild, wonderful dance, or something, all in the sky. And it seemed like it was to music—music that moved them like light moves—oh, there aren’t words! But there wasn’t any music either, when they disappeared. I guess their moving made the music. I listened with all my eyes—
“And below my window someone said, ‘Skying? Already? Valancy’d better hurry the spinning.’ And happy laughter moving away.
“But all the time I felt under—way down—as if I had to look up—
“No! No way! They never put me down—not ever. They wouldn’t! They—they couldn’t! Together. One. Loving. Helping. Oh, you know! So many people talk it—they do it!”
The Listener murmured into her tired silence.
“No, no lockstep at all,” Katie-Mary said. “Everyone’s his own self. No one does something just because others do—except maybe the children.”
Again a murmur.
“No different from any town in the hills,
” said Katie-Mary. “Campers stop for directions. They don’t notice anything, except they go away smiling and comfortable. Not many come. The Canyon is out of the way—
“Yes, there’s a road—but it’s not much of one. They—because, of course, they don’t use it much.”
Katie-Mary’s voice was tired now—no longer twanging like a too-tight string. “I still remember the soft sound of footsteps back and forth, back and forth. They have a big room for a meeting place, and I heard the footsteps upstairs—back and forth, back and forth. It kinda bugged me, and Karen laughed and took me up there. Valancy was there spinning thread on a huge spinning wheel like in old pictures. Not sitting—pacing back and forth across the floor, in and out of the splash of sun that came through a little window, pulling the thread out fine and letting it wind on a spindle.
“That finished me—again,” Katie-Mary whispered painfully. “She was spinning the sunlight into thread! Sun! Maybe something else with it,” she answered the Listener. “But all I saw was the sun. ‘It’s special,’ Karen told me. ‘For weddings and christenings. We weave it—’ She held up a piece of light and smoothed her hand across it. It changed colors as she stroked it. ‘We don’t decide what color to hold it until we’re ready to use it.’ I wish now I had touched it. I was afraid to. Did you ever stroke the sun?
“Imagine! Cloth of the sun and a guy out back chopping wood for the fireplaces. No roads ’Cause they don’t need them—and the kids picking peas in the garden for supper—”
There was a long silence, and I wondered if Katie-Mary had gone to sleep. She sounded tired enough. But the silence sounded busy—awfully busy. Then the Listener said something brief and broken.
“Take you there!” Katie-Mary’s voice squealed into life. “No way, man! No way! I’m not bleeding again for no dude! No way!” Then her voice changed and pleaded. “I can’t. Honest, I can’t. Not even if you are lost. Not even if you’ve been looking all your life. I can’t! I don’t know the way—remember? How do you expect me to remember a road we never touched? You think maybe there are signposts on clouds? I don’t even know which direction—except—” her voice was thoughtful. “Except just before we started to walk down into the Canyon, the sun came up behind us and pointed our shadows into the Canyon.”
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