Look at Flower Read online

  A hundred bucks! I’d never had that much in my life. Even the twenty-five in my pocket is amazing. The whole amount sounds like a fortune.

  And what could be easier, just ride the bus like anybody else, get off at the other end, meet a Dodge Dart driven by a guy named Shadow (I’ll recognize the car; it’ll have two orange Styrofoam Union 76 balls on the radio antenna), pass the contraband to him, then take the next bus back to the city to pick up my cash.

  I’m counting it in my head now, seeing tens and twenties being laid out in my palm. Harley told me if it works out, no reason it couldn’t become a regular gig. How hard is that? Just sit here on the bus reading Anna Karenina or dreaming my dreamy thoughts while the boring countryside rolls by, then hand over the goods and count the buckos.

  Except I got a real paranoid streak down my back, and I’m thinking everybody on the bus is on to me—they can just smell the cannabis in the duffel—and they’re gonna get the driver to walkie-talkie ahead, and there’ll be half a dozen . . . no, a full dozen . . . cop cars waiting for me and big, mean sniffer dogs and handcuffs and drawn guns: Look at Flower, big-time dope runner, hauled down by the law, making some narc’s career! (And, damn, what’s that highway patrol car doing right next to the bus right this second. . . ? Oh, passing us by, and taking the turnoff we just went past.)

  O.K., I’m holding it together, though I wish I had Toto with me, he makes everything go down mellower, and I hope he’s having a good time out in that backyard. Breathe slower. Deeper. Ah, that’s better. . . .

  There’s no bus stop in Davis, so the plan is, I go past it to Sacramento and meet Shadow there. I see the Davis turnoff and know I’m getting close. In Sacramento, we run right up next to the state capitol—it’s this crumbly white building; I’ve seen it on TV, but it looks a lot smaller in person—and then we’re in the smoky, grimy terminal.

  I can’t see any Dodge Darts, orange balls or not, so I get off the bus like any other passenger, then head into the waiting area. The duffel is heavy, and I’m pulling it along the floor. Here’s Flower, slight young thing dragging along her big green ball and chain.

  To my startlement some guy grabs the web strap and lifts the bag off the floor. I whirl around at him and cry, “Hey, that’s my bag.”

  People are stopping and staring at us, but the guy just keeps pulling on the strap. I’m holding on for dear life. The guy’s tall, with shoulder-length pitch-black hair underneath a bright red bandanna. “What’re you—” I start to say, when he gives the bag a tug, nearly pulling me over, then whispers, “Hey, Flower, cool it.”

  This is Shadow? Jesus, he’s hardly inconspicuous. He’s wearing a blousy white shirt with puffy sleeves and corduroy pants made out of purple paisley print. He’s even taller than I first thought. I’m only five-four, but this guy’s gotta be well over six feet.

  We’re still in the middle of the waiting room. There’re rent-a-cops over there, drinking coffee, and uniformed bus guys everywhere, not to mention dozens of passengers. This guy’s grinning down at me like some kind of hawk-nosed loon.

  “You’re not being very cool,” I whisper, and he makes a big deal of not hearing me. He’s standing there with the duffel over his shoulder. I say, louder, “O.K., is this it?” I’m half looking toward the departure sign, see when the next bus is, when he grabs my arm and says, “Come on, let’s blow.”

  Jesus! Do I make a scene here, with all the dope in the duffel? No, I’m not crazy. The guy’s got his big hand on my bare upper arm and he’s leading me out of the terminal. In the parking lot I see the Dart with the two Union 76 balls, except there are three of ’em, squashed one on top of the other. You can’t miss this big flash of orange flying like a flag above the sea-green car.

  “Where’re we going?” I say. Then: “I gotta get back to Frisco.”

  He just keeps dragging me, and what am I gonna do, cry for the police? So I just go with him. When we get to the Dart, he opens the trunk, throws in the duffel, then gallantly opens the passenger door for me. He does it with a whole swashbuckler thing, bending at the waist and flourishing me into the door.

  I climb in, and when the guy gets in behind the steering wheel—he’s so tall, he’s scrunching in—I say again, “Where’re we going?”

  He winks at me. “We thought you might like a little vacation out here in cow country.”

  I roll my eyes. Cow country! Last thing in the world I need.

  “Who’s we?”

  “Carl and your pals back in the city.”

  “Yeah, and what gives him the right to make any decisions for me?” I’m breathing a little fast. “And by the way, are you this guy Shadow he told me about?”

  The driver extends a hand, says, “That’s me.” Then: “Well, you know, you kinda work for him now.”

  “Yeah, but you’re kidnapping me.”

  Shadow gives me a look, then pulls the car over to the side of the road. It’s hot out here, and I realize I’ve been digging the air rushing in and beating back my hair. “You want out?” He points to the side of the road, which is dirt and some wire fence. “Flower?” He’s curling his wide purply lips.

  I wasn’t bluffing, but it seems I was. I sit there furiously silent for a long couple minutes, then I squeak out, “O.K., where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.” And Shadow just laughs.

  - - - - -

  It’s a big, white clapboard farmhouse a few miles outside the town of Davis. We go down a quarter-mile drive and pull up in front of the place. There’s a guy without a shirt out front working an old-fashioned water pump, and two chicks in sundresses lying on chaise longues.

  The place couldn’t look more pleasant. The house, unlike my parents’ in Bend, is wide open, breezy, and sunny. There’s very little furniture, just these big pillows on the floor and watercolors of flowers on the walls. Later I learn that it’s the shirtless guy, his name’s Run, and he’s half Japanese, who painted them; he was an art student at the university. The two girls are Patsy and Merry. Patsy’s from Seattle. She’s got long, straight black hair and tortoiseshell glasses that perch on her nose like a librarian; she’s always reading books, which jazzes me. She was a student at the UC, too. Merry’s on the road like me; she says she’s from L.A. but hated all the phonies down there and met Carl in San Francisco before heading out here. Shadow grew up on a farm on the other side of Sacramento, but he’s traveled everywhere. Merry told me he spent some time with this guy Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. I’d heard of them in Frisco; they were behind the Acid Tests that were the thing the year before I got to town.

  It’s a little weird, but it seems they’ve been waiting for me to show up. I’m not sure why, but I find a room upstairs all ready for me, with clean sheets and a heap of pillows. There’s even a fan in the window.

  I settle right in, and it’s pretty sweet. They call themselves the Big Star commune (there’s a banner on the wall with a big red star with a black fist inside it), and the girls cook huge meals of grains and vegetables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; nobody goes hungry. Shadow is good at keeping everything going, and Run, he’s quiet, but I’m getting the sense that he’s the idea man in the group. What’s the idea? I’m not sure, though Merry and Run take off the next day to the campus with the weed I brought. When they get back that night, they pile a big heap of wrinkled and smushed bills, mostly fives, some tens, in the center of the dining table, and before dinner we all count it out. There’s over $500. Shadow makes a point of handing me my $75, what I’m owed for bringing the stuff out here.

  They sell it; except for Shadow they don’t smoke it. Run drinks beer, Patsy wine, but I’m a little surprised how sober the whole scene is. You know, that suits me. Here Flower is, taking up with a new family. And so far I dig it.

  We’re a universe of kids; that’s what’s so new these days. The Beatles, you listen to them, they’re our guides (and I’m even getting into their new flip-side song, Penny Lane—really dig the homey pictures of barbers and nu
rses Paul’s singing about), along with writers like Ken Kesey and Joseph Heller, and poets like Allen Ginsberg. More than books, we have our own way of living, our own businesses, our own ways of thinking. That’s what we start doing at night, listening to Patsy and Run debate. They’re talking political stuff, most of it’s over my head, but I dig the sound of their voices going back and forth.

  “You’re wrong,” Patsy says. “Anarchism offers no solution to the imperialistic power structure. Dig it, Run. It’s got no shape or form—that’s the whole idea, right?”

  “Absofuckinglutely,” Run says. His sly smile’s cooking.

  “But then it’s nothing, it’s like air. Only organized resistance can destroy the structure of oppression to the individual.”

  That last sentence is a mouthful; I don’t know what it means. But Run right away says, “We gotta stay free—that’s the whole idea!”

  Patsy shakes her head. “Free? No one will truly be free until we’re all free—until the truly oppressed are free. And that freedom can only come from self-defense struggle—and you know where Mao said that has to come from!”

  “Are we ready for revolution?” Run asks softly.

  Patsy’s quiet too; it looks like she’s thinking big time. Then she says in a half whisper, “We really have any fuckin’ choice?”

  All their high-falutin’ talk makes my head spin. When I say this to Run later that night, he says, “Flower, you know, at the core of the revolution is a dialectic.

  “A what?”

  “Dialectic.”

  I pinch my brow. “What’s that, like some kind of battery?”

  Run laughs, then shrugs. “Means basically that we yell at each other a lot.”

  “You sure do that.” We smile at each other.

  Seems like every night after dinner they do their dialectic thing. I just drop into one of the big pillows, letting the talk rise up around me, and watch all their faces.

  Shadow’s is the deepest-furrowed. He’s already got lines, coursing his forehead and crinkling next to his mouth. His black hair’s in a widow’s peak and is usually pulled back in a ponytail he squinches tight with a Mexican leather band. He wears tight jeans and shirts with bolo ties; he looks a little cowboy to me, even the way he walks, his knees wide, his body falling back on his heels. Run’s hair’s a bowl cut, like early John Paul George Ringo, and he has two ruby studs in one ear. He’s got a sensitive rounded chin, dark black eyes, and full, Mick Jagger lips. I’m starting to think he’s kind of cute. Patsy, like I said, looks like a junior librarian, and Merry has puffs of reddish gold hair that ring her head, big actressy eyes, and a faint fluff of blonde hairs above her mouth, which I can’t decide if it’s gross or sort of fun.

  And Flower? I’m pulling back my own blonde tangles, digging how the sun’s been lightening my hair, and I’ve been borrowing clothes from Merry, who’s only half a size bigger than me; and so day in, day out I’m in long flowing skirts that with the sun behind, you can see through, and filmy white blouses and no bra. They’re like fairy clothes, and I love to dance and whirl across the lawn, feeling almost naked and free. One morning I just start doing cartwheels, the loose skirt dropping over my head, my white underwear shining like long-held secrets revealed, Run and Shadow and the girls sitting in the lawn chairs clapping and whistling, bright with glee.

  I start missing Toto. I’m sleeping alone—I think Patsy’s sleeping with Shadow, and Merry with Run, but it’s possible I’m wrong; or that they switch around?—but I have nothing in bed with me, and I miss Toto’s warm little belly horribly. He’s my best friend. I’m also sort of wondering why I’m out here on this farm outside Sacramento, though it’s groovy enough and I’m not really too freaked. It’s all a pretty nice summer layback, and I’m going with the flow.

  One Friday afternoon at the beginning of June, Run swoops the Dodge Dart into our driveway, slams on the brakes, then jumps out and cries, “I’ve got it! It’s out!”

  I’m across the way hoeing our vegetable garden. He’s holding up something flat that flashes alternatively red and blue. It’s about the size of a . . . record.

  Is this it? We’ve heard rumors. A new Beatles album. Run talked to a musician friend in San Francisco, who told him a new record was on its way, and it was going to blow everyone’s mind.

  I drop my hoe, lift my skirt, and dash into the house. Run is already there, plastic wrap falling behind him on the floor, standing over the stereo.

  “What’s it called?” I say.

  Run smiles at me. “Dig this. It’s not the Beatles at all. It’s a whole new group. They’re calling themselves Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

  “Wow!” I move up next to him. I’m thinking how much like one of our San Francisco psychedelic bands that sounds like. This is gonna be a trip.

  The rainbow-swirl label starts to spin on the changer, and the tone arm automatically drops. Run is holding the album jacket, and for the first time I see that it folds open—it’s a whole amazing-looking package—and that on the cover there is a sea of little faces.

  “Are the Beatles even there?”

  “Shhhh,” Merry goes. She’s come up behind us.

  Whssp, whsssssp, the needle runs the outer rim, and the first thing we hear is . . . not a song, but a crowd noise, sounds of a brass band tuning up. What the. . . ? Then there’s a heavy bass, drums, guitar, and what sounds like Paul singing about someone named Sgt. Pepper and how his band’s been going in and out of style for twenty years, then there’s a horn riff, and then John comes in on the chorus, chanting that that’s who they are now: They are Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!

  Shadow and Patsy have joined us, and after Run turns the stereo up as loud as he can, we all move over to our mauve couch popping springs, which we fall back into, the five of us squeezed tight right in front of the speakers.

  How can I explain it? The sounds, the songs, the sweep of what we’re hearing. I can’t take it all in at once. I mean, there’s a harpsichord on one song, strings on others, a whole sitar raga thing kicking off side two, and all kinds of jumbled sounds all over the place even though at bottom it’s still great drums-and-bass rock ’n’ roll; and I guess nobody else can take it all in either, ’cuz as soon as this piano crash at the end of side two that seems to last forever actually fades to silence and the needle whssp, whsssssps again, Run gets up and simply flips over the black disk, and we listen to the whole astonishing record all over again.

  And again and again. All weekend we play Sgt. Pepper, first side, second side, first side, second side. Nobody gets even a bit tired of it. Every time I hear it, I see something new. I’ve never, ever . . . and then there’s the cover. That totally blows my mind. The jacket doesn’t come to me till everyone else has looked at it, and when I finally hold it in my hands, I see the Beatles there on the front, in their satin band suits, and the wax figures of the four black-suited moptops next to them, and above them this collage of faces—faces on top of faces over more faces.

  The game, I get it, is to see how many you can recognize. I’m not doing too badly for a chick who only got through high school. There’s Dylan, of course, and W.C. Fields, whose movies I’d watch on the Late Show when I could sneak it; oh, there’s Laurel and Hardy, too. I get Marilyn Monroe, but not the wax figure glamour puss in a gold lamé dress next to George. And up in the top row is Edgar Allen Poe; The Gold Bug is still one of my favorite short stories. But so many of the faces I don’t have a clue about. It makes me a little frustrated, but kind of excited, too: like I got all this more to learn.

  We play Sgt. Pepper all weekend, have a big early-summer feast on Sunday night, lots of natural foods, grains, fresh vegetables, weird Asian spices—these guys are into health, and I’m getting into it, too—and turn in early, the harpsichord sounds of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds winding us down.

  It’s still dark out when I hear the stereo blaring Good Morning, Good Morning, and then Run is next to my bed, saying, “Flower, get dres
sed.”

  “Huh?” I look at the clock: 4 a.m. “What’s up, Run?”

  “We got work to do.”

  “Work, like what?” I’m thinking, does he mean put on work clothes? I don’t have any. I say sleepily, “Can I wear a dress?”

  He gives me a funny look, then says, “We’re taking a trip.”

  “A trip? What?” I shake my dozy head. “Where?”

  “You’ll see.” He gives me an incredibly tight smile, then says, “And, um, I think you’d be more comfortable in pants. Loose pants, I’d say.”

  We eat a quick breakfast, then pile into the commune’s biggest car, a blood-red Buick with these portholes on the side. I ask a couple times where we’re going but get no answer.

  Everybody’s pretty quiet, drawn into themselves. Shadow makes a joke about a couple donkeys in Mexico, but it’s lame and nobody laughs. I’m squeezed in the back between Run and Merry, Shadow’s driving, Patsy’s shotgun. I’m not even sure in what direction we’re heading.

  Dawn starts breaking after an hour or so. We keep driving. Another three hours. Then I see a sign that says oregon.

  I get a weird feeling. Could this be about me? Why would they care? No, there’s no way they could be taking me home—why?

  They’re not. We finally get off the highway at Medford. I don’t know that town; never been there. We drive past a couple malls, then we’re into an old downtown. We pull up for a few minutes, but nobody leaves the car. Then Shadow shifts into gear and we turn down a residential street, lots of white clapboard houses.

  This is all pretty mysterious, and I’m about to insist that they tell me what’s going on when we turn down a dead-end street. At the end of it is an old pickup truck, white with patches of gray primer. The truck’s just sitting there, and we pull up behind it. Run gets out and tries the door; it opens, and he sits in the cab. His head disappears below the seat for a while, then he sits up straight, and the truck fires up with a series of roaring coughs.