Look at Flower Read online

  I shake my head; see Butter shaking hers.

  “So we just get a bison,” Chester goes on, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Bring him out to the desert here and let him run free—like us.”

  We’re all just struck silent, when Suri, in her high child’s voice, says from my lap, “I think it’s really neat.”

  “Suri?”

  “Really, Dad.” Suri’s sitting so I can see only half her face; the eye I see is large with amazement. She shakes her curly blonde hair. “That’d be soooo far out. Our very own bison at Old Bison—”

  “Yeah.” Chester’s beaming.

  “Steal from our zoo?” Butter’s moving her head from side to side. “Man, you’ve gotta be smoking waaay too much doobie—”

  Chester pulls back a trace, defensive. “Hey, we’re just rappin’ here. But if I was an animal in the zoo, I’d want to be out of there.”

  I see Saffron lean forward, brush her silver-streaked hair from her eyes, then say softly but directly, “Not if I were taking care of you.”

  It takes a second, then everyone hears her, and laughs. It’s a bright chortle of release rippling around the candle-lit table. It takes a minute longer, but even Chester starts grinning.

  But I can see he’s a little red-faced as he says, “Yeah, like you take care of all of us now?”

  “Hey!” Saffron says. She flinches, then picks up a roll, one of Butter’s home-baked whole-grain ones. With an overhead lob, she throws it across the table. Chester’s staring out with a bug-eyed gleam, and Saffron’s aim’s great. The roll bounces off Chester’s forehead with a thunk.

  He freezes; up go his eyebrows. He shoots a glare at her, his mouth an ugly smear. The way he’s looking at her, it’s like smoke is starting to pour out of his head.

  Everybody’s stone still, checking out Chester then Saffron and back.

  But Chester smiles. “Hey, peace,” he says, holding up two fingers. “Peeeaaaace.”

  Yet he doesn’t have peace in mind at all. With his other hand he picks up a roll and with an overhead fireball throws it back in our direction. We all duck and it misses us, but that starts a food fight like nothing I’ve been in before. More rolls, spoons of bean stew, glops of quinoa. Grace spins and slams a slice of banana cream pie down on Billy’s head, and through the gooey stickiness on his face he laughs maniacally, then counters with a wide spritz of seltzer over all of us. Chester sits back and cackles merrily. It’s pretty stupid, but crazy fun, too. The evening ends with us all down on the floor having a tickle war. I’m laughing so much I can barely hold my legs together to not pee myself. For the rest of the evening we’re all giddy as goldfish.

  - - - - -

  One Saturday i go with Butter out to Tex Albom’s Balloon Farm. The Balloon Farm is on the main road into Albuquerque. You come over a hill, and there they are: a line of multicolored globes dancing on white metal ropes above wicker baskets. From a distance they look like beach balls tossed up into the air, bobbing in the blue sky; when you’re closer, you see how big they are—like a shadow looming above you in a dream.

  The balloons are all striped, red and white, green and white, blue and yellow, blue and red going around the balloon, and the one that Butter says she likes best, a purple-and-faint-pink one striped up and down. Six balloons, on a Saturday all straining on their metal ropes, ready to go.

  We pull into a large, dusty parking lot, and head over to a small hut with a white sign reading tex albom’s balloon farm above it. Butter’s told me a little about Tex, how he’s a good-sized guy who set out to be a prospector and hit it pretty big, but I’m still struck when I see him. At first he’s behind a desk in the hut, but when he sees me and Butter, he clatters down the wooden steps, and I’m blown away by how huge he is. My first thought is Paul Bunyan, with a neck thick as a lamppost, a sky-topping white cowboy hat above a head shaped like an anvil, and skin creased brown as leather. Like Paul Bunyan, he’s wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans so big around in the butt you could drop a cow into ’em.

  “Hey, Butter, darlin’, glad you’re here. Who’s your friend?” he calls out, and it’s a voice with its own echo.

  “This is Flower, Tex. She’s staying with me up the road.”

  “Hey, little child.” Tex steps down and sticks out his hand, and it swallows my arm almost up to my elbow.

  Butter, looking up, says, “You got the balloons inflated already.”

  Tex nods and says, “Curt’s back in town.” He turns to me and says, “That’s my son. He’s usually off on the rodeo.” To Butter: “Came out early with me.”

  “Looks like you got a couple of folk up already.”

  “Gonna be a good day,” Tex says. “Got the balloons booked.”

  “Really?” Butter says, but it’s kind of muffled, and Tex must have thought she said that she hadn’t heard him, because he repeats, “Yep, all of them are booked today.”

  Tex goes back into the office, and when he’s gone, Butter says, “Well, that’s a drag.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought if one was free, we could take it up—maybe late in the day.”

  I look up at the row of brightly colored balloons, then into the glassy blue sky, and I imagine stepping into one of them and it lifting off the ground, just that first rushing whoosh . . . and like that, there’s hardly anything I’ve wanted more than to sail off beneath one of the huge globes.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Well, who knows, maybe somebody won’t show.”

  “Do you take people up?”

  Butter’s gazing again at the balloons, but she shakes her head. “No, I help get everybody ready, make sure they have water and sandwiches.” She shrugs. “Sometimes get the balloons ready. Answer the phone. Whatever else comes up.” She points over to a shaded porch with half a dozen wiry guys also wearing plaid shirts and cowboy hats, though each of them is pretty small—about half the size of Tex and not much bigger than I am. “They’re the pilots.”

  I nod, then say, “So what should I do?”

  Butter lifts her hands. “Whatever you want. You can help me if you’d like. Or just go over and sit in the shade and read.”

  I pitch in and help Butter make a pile of tuna sandwiches, which we throw into a cooler, and then wrap chocolate chip cookies in separate pieces of tin foil. Butter goes off to fill a row of thermoses, a one-person job she says, and I go over to the shaded porch, where I see a few empty chairs.

  One of the cowboy pilots calls out, “Hey, pretty lady.”

  “Hey,” I say. The porch is big enough that I can be at one end of it, away from the men.

  “What’s your name?” another pilot calls out.

  “Flower.”

  “And pretty as one, too,” a third pilot says.

  I blush but make a bit of a production of getting myself settled. I swing the wooden lounge chair around so that it faces the balloons—and away from the waiting men.

  I have this novel I’m reading called The Bell Jar that Billy’s old lady Grace gave to me at Old Bison. The novel’s set about as far away from where we are as can be, this girl a little older than me spending the summer in New York City working for a fancy fashion magazine. It takes place about ten years back, and boy the world has changed since then. Still, I kind of dig the book, the way Esther, the hero, meets guys and goes to fancy dances but gets confused and feels awfully empty and lost. I’m at the part now where Esther’s left New York City and is about to go to a mental hospital. It’s all really sad, but I find I can’t put it down.

  And that’s how the day passes. Butter keeps herself busy keeping everyone happy, the balloon riders and the cowboy pilots, and I read and watch people climb into the wicker baskets, take their deep breaths, the ropes drop away, the huge colored globes lifting slow and glorious into the shimmering air. It turns out to be one of the most peaceful and nice days I can remember.

  - - - - -

  A few days later at Old Bison everyone’s in a tizzy.
Chester got a letter: We’re going to have visitors, two guys from Hollywood. One’s named Dennis and the other’s Jack, Chester says. Oh, and they might bring their friend Peter, who Saffron tells me later is the son of a famous actor. Sally talks about the father at dinner, and I know I saw him in Late Show movies like The Grapes of Wrath and one about Abe Lincoln as a boy.

  Chester says, “They’re stopping here on the way to the Hog Farm.” The Hog Farm is another commune, north of Santa Fe, run by a guy everyone calls Wavy Gravy. “They’ll be here a few nights first.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” Saffron says. We’re all at the dinner table eating venison from a deer that Billy shot.

  “These guys are really cool,” Chester says. There’s a breathy whistle to his voice I haven’t heard before. “I mean, there’s hardly any freaks in the movie biz, but these guys are it. They’ve actually been in movies. Dennis was in Rebel Without a Cause, with Jimmy Dean, and the other guy in Hell’s Angels on Wheels. I didn’t see it, but I heard it was righteous.”

  “A biker movie?” Butter says.

  “Not every movie’s gotta be Mary Poppins,” Chester snaps off.

  Butter just glares at him.

  “So the question is, what we’re gonna do special for these dudes.”

  “Why do anything?” Saffron says.

  “We’re getting ’em before Wavy does.” Chester shrugs, and his hair on his shoulders bobs. “Hey, we want to make an impression.”

  “An impression?” Butter again. “Like they’re from a clique of girls above you in high school?”

  “Butter, can it,” Sally says from her usual spot next to her old man. “Chet’s just talking about appropriate hospitality—”

  “Yeah,” Chester goes, with that dark wink, “hospitality.”

  “Too bad we’re having the deer now,” Billy says. He’s still wearing his one-eyeball apron, though the eye now looks bloodshot from all the sauces and meat juices that have landed on it. “Bet they don’t get venison every day in Hollywood.” A pause. “I could try to shoot us another one.”

  “I’m not sure they even eat meat,” Sally says. “I think I read that in a magazine.”

  “And I just mean a real . . . impression.” Chester’s eyes fire up, doing their smoky I’m-in-charge-here thing. “Any ideas?”

  Nobody says anything then, but I have a feeling we all can tell what’s on his mind. And after we eat our rhubarb compote for dessert, I see Saffron go up and talk to Chester; not secretive exactly, but private.

  - - - - -

  Look at Flower, wheeling my wheelbarrow down the narrow stone path, tipping from all the grub I’m taking to my guys. While one of the regular staff is on vacation, I’m being allowed to feed the big animals. There’s a bucket each of ground meat for Sebastian the tiger and Lima the lion, alfalfa and horse chow for the lizards, and two teeming buckets of those dumb mice for the snakes. It’s a hot morning, the Southwestern sun beating down all day long, and I’m of course sweating into my beige zookeeper polo shirt, wet patches on my front. Salty drops fall into my eyes. The zoo people have given me this tiger-print bandanna I keep tied around my neck, and I use it to keep the wetness from dripping down. I dip it into a trough then wring it out and tie it around my forehead. I catch a glimpse of myself in a metal pole, Flower’s wet blonde hair pulled back, her forehead shiny under the bandanna: Hey, I’m a pirate lassie!

  When I get to the big cats’ cage, I spend a longer time than usual. Something’s definitely up back at the commune. Neither Butter nor Saffron said anything on the way to work this morning, but what I’ve picked up is there’s been a shift of thinking, away from Chester’s bison and back to lions and tigers.

  Are they really thinking of taking one of the cats? It seems nuts to me, though I could tell the vision of parading a lion or tiger around the commune when the Hollywood guys come is infecting not just Chester and Sally. The visitors are expected in a week, on Tuesday; this is Thursday morning.

  “You happy here?” I say under my breath to Sebastian and Lima. They’re both fairly young, muscles rippling beneath their tawny skins, their cat-alert eyes always sweeping along. When I’m in their feeding area, I keep my gaze on them, and they come over and watch me. I toss the ground meat in a trough, then shut the gate behind me and flip the switch that lets them in. They head right to the food. I’m thinking, Do you feel trapped here? Do you want to be liberated? Part of a crazy commune in the desert?

  Or isn’t this zoo simply your home?

  Something’s been decided between Saffron and Butter, I can tell on the way back to Old Bison. I try to make conversation, asking how their day went at the zoo, but Butter just shakes her head and Saffron goes, “Same as every other day. Why?”

  - - - - -

  I can feel the tension building, though nobody talks to me about it. When Saturday comes around, I ask Butter if I can go with her to her job at the Balloon Farm; she hesitates a moment, then says, “Sure—come on.”

  We’re in one of the commune’s bison-painted vans; as usual Butter’s driving. We don’t say much down from the high desert, but then she goes, “What do you think about the movie people coming on Tuesday?”

  I shrug. “Guess it’ll be something different.”

  “You’re not excited?”

  “Are you?” I don’t hear much excitement in her voice.

  She lifts her shoulders. “Not really.” She turns and half faces me. “Chester sure seems pumped up.”

  “I’m not sure why.”

  “He’s got his big ego trip going.”

  “Seems like.”

  “You know, it’s not very much in the spirit of the commune. Don’t you think?”

  I lean back in my seat and don’t say anything for a moment. Butter gives me another look. Finally, I say, “I’m not sure what the spirit of the commune is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I get it that we grow our own food and make our clothes, at least some of ’em, and eat together and all; we do all these groovy things—”

  “But?”

  “But I thought we were—” I pause for a second, all kinds of things I guess I’ve been feeling but haven’t said to anyone, even myself “—I don’t know, I just thought we were going to be . . . be better somehow.” I feel my jaw tighten. “Maybe not perfect—” I let the word hang there, thinking of the after-dinner ceremony “—but, you know, better than we were. Than what we came from. At least that.”

  “You don’t think—” Butter looks over at me.

  “I keep looking,” I say. “And hoping, but—” I shrug. As I hear myself, I’m not sure about all that I’m saying. It sounds kind of phony. I keep thinking of a better way to put it, what I truly want, but my head’s a little cloudy, and . . . ah, look: There down the road is the line of Tex’s balloons, bobbing cheerily in the beautiful blue sky. That stops my rambling thoughts cold.

  Butter’s too, I guess, because she’s silent all the way down the hill; but then she starts to nod slowly. “Yeah, Flower,” she says, “I can dig it, what you’re saying.” She says it strong and firm, as if something’s been decided—something big. A quick flick of her copper hair. Then to herself: “Yeah, O.K., mmm-hmmm, yeah, good.”

  We pull into the dusty parking lot of the Balloon Farm, and Butter goes off to work. I’ve finished the Bell Jar book, a true bummer, and have brought along Alice in Wonderland, this dog-eared paperback copy with a pretty sketch of Alice and the rabbit on it. A week back Sally came home with the new 45 by this San Francisco band Jefferson Airplane I remember from free shows in the Panhandle. The record’s called White Rabbit, and we keep playing it over and over, grooving on the hypnotic bass-drum rat-tat-tat and the chick singer’s fiery voice. In the song she lays out the whole Alice story, and it’s one of the trippiest things we’ve ever heard. Feed your head. Exactly.

  All the balloon pilots are back under the awning, waiting for rides like before; all of them, one after the other, tip their cowboy
hats to me as I sit down.

  “Flower?” one of them says, as if trying to make sure he has my name right.

  “That’s me.”

  “Groovy!” He and the rest of the balloon guys laugh. I get it, they’re trying to be hip. I give ’em a laugh back.

  I’ve just followed Alice down the rabbit hole when I’m bathed in shade. I look up and see a huge figure standing over me.

  He doffs his hat.

  “Hey, little child.”

  “Hey, Tex.”

  “Whattaya reading?”

  I hold the paperback up.

  “Good book.”

  “You know it?”

  “Used to read it to my little girls.”

  “I bet they love being read to.”

  “That they do. Mightily.” Tex squats down so he’s nearly at my height. I see him nod. “That book’s one of the reasons I like you people out there.” He brushes his hand out in the direction we came from.

  “You mean, Old Bison.”

  He nods his leathery head. “Gotta try new things. Gotta keep our heads free.” He smiles at me, then lifts his gaze and smiles. “Gotta keep the balloons flying.”

  I’m getting a sweet vibe off of Tex. Butter says he’s a good man, and, yeah, he seems that.

  “I like it here,” I say. “Just came to get away from the commune for a while.”

  “Oh, yeah? How come?”

  I lift my shoulders. “It’s—things are getting a little, um, heavy.”

  “I get that from Butter.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “a little heavy.”

  Tex nods then says, “Well, you’re welcome here any time, little child.” He stands again, blocking the light. “Got to get you up in a balloon one of these days, too, right?”

  “Oh, Tex, I’d love that!”

  “Well, little child, I’ll see what I can do.”

  I’m kind of waiting to get the nod for a balloon trip all day, but customers keep coming, and the balloons keep lifting off. Most of the day I’m alone on the porch with my book. When the sun starts setting, Butter comes up and says, “I’m done. Ready to go?”