Lauren Groff: Arcadia

The women in the river, singing.

This is Bit’s first memory, although he hadn’t been born when it happened. Still, the road winding through the mountains is clear to him, the rest stop with the yellow flowers that closed under the children’s touch. It was dusk when the Caravan saw the river greening around the bend and stopped there for the night. It was a blue spring evening, and cold.

On the bank, trucks and buses and vans circled like bison against the wind, the double-decker Pink Piper at the heart. Handy, their leader, was on the Piper’s roof doing sun salutations to the dying day. Naked children darted on the fringes of camp, their skin rough with goosebumps. The men built a bonfire, tuned guitars, started suppers of vegetable stews and pancakes. The women washed clothes and linens in the frigid river, beating wet fabric against the rocks. In the last light, shadows grew from their knees and the current sparked with suds.

Bit’s mother, Hannah, unbent to peel a sheet like a membrane from the water’s surface. She was all round: cheek, limb, hair in a golden loop of braids. The denim of her overalls was taut at the belly, where Bit was inside, building cell by cell. On the bank, his father, Abe, paused to watch Hannah, her head cocked as she listened to the other women singing, a smile just under her lips.

Later, the smells of supper died beneath the woodsmoke and the fire blazed against the cold. More music: “Froggy Went A-Courtin” in Handy’s famous rasp, “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” “The Sounds of Silence.” The laundry dried on the bushes, specters at the edge of sight.

It is impossible that Bit could remember all this: weeks before his birth, three years before Arcadia, 1968 all over the radio, Khe Sanh and the Grenoble Olympics, the Caravan in the middle of a hopscotch across the country, that evening with its blue light and bonfire and sheets ghosting in the dark. But he does. The memory clings to him, told by Arcadia until it became communal, told again and again until the story grew inside him to become Bit’s own. Night, fire, music, Abe’s back keeping out the cold, Hannah leaning against Abe’s toasted front, Bit himself curled within his parents, wrapped in their happiness, happy.

Bit is already moving when he wakes. It is February, still dark. He is five years old. His father is zipping Bit within his own jacket where it is warmest, and Abe’s heart beats a drum against Bit’s ear. The boy drowses as they climb down from the Bread Truck, where they live, and over the frosted ground of Ersatz Arcadia. The trucks and buses and lean-tos are black heaps against the night, their home until they can finish Arcadia House in the vague someday.

The gong is calling them to Sunday Morning Meeting, somewhere. A river of people flows in the dark. He smells the bread of his mother, feels the wind carrying the cold from the Great Lake to the north, hears the rustling as the forest wakes. In the air there is excitement and low, loving greetings; there is small snow, the smoke from someone’s joint, a woman’s voice, indistinct.

When Bit’s eyes open again, the world is softened with first light. The tufts of the hayfield push up from under trampled snow. They are in the Sheep’s Meadow and he feels the bodies closer now, massing. Handy’s voice rises from behind Bit and up toward all of Arcadia, the seven dozen true believers in the winter morning. Bit twists to see Handy sitting among the maroon curls of the early skunk cabbage at the lip of the forest. He turns back, pressing his cheek against the pulse in his father’s neck.

Bit is tiny, a mote of a boy. He is often scooped up, carried. He doesn’t mind. From against the comforting strength of adults, he is undetected. He can watch from there, he can listen.

Over Abe’s shoulder, far atop the hill, the heaped brick shadow of Arcadia House looms. In the wind, the tarps over the rotted roof suck against the beams and blow out, a beast’s panting belly. The half-glassed windows are open mouths, the full-glassed are eyes fixed on Bit. He looks away. Behind Abe sits the old man in his wheelchair, Midge’s father, who likes to rocket down the hill at the children, scattering them. The terror washes over Bit again, the loom and creak, the flash of a toothless mouth and the hammer-and-sickle flag as it flaps in passing. The Dartful Codger, Hannah calls the old man, with a twist to her mouth. The Zionist, others call him, because this is what he shouts for after sundown: Zion, milk and honey, land of plenty, a place for his people to rest. One night, listening, Bit said, Doesn’t the Dartful Codger know where he is? and Abe looked down at Bit among his wooden toys, bemused, saying, Where is he? and Bit said, Arcadia, meaning the word the way Handy always said it, with his round Buddha face, building the community with smooth sentences until the others can also see the fields bursting with fruits and grains, the sunshine and music, the people taking care of one another in love.

In the cold morning, though, the Dartful Codger is too small and crabbed for terror. He is almost asleep under a plaid blanket Midge has tucked around him. He wears a hunter’s cap, the earflaps down. His nose whistles, and steam spurts from it, and Bit thinks of the kettle on the hob. Handy’s voice washes over him:. . work, as in pleasure, variety is evidently the desire of nature . . words too heavy for the soft feet of this morning. As the dawn light sharpens, the Dartful Codger becomes distinct. Veins branch across his nose, shadows gouge his face. He rouses himself, frowns at Bit, shuffles his hands on his lap.

. . God , says Handy, or the Eternal Spark, is in every human heart, in every piece of this earth. In this rock, in this ice, in this plant, this bird. All deserve our gentleness.

The old man’s face is changing. Astonishment steals over the hoary features. Startled, Bit can’t look away. The eyes blink but come to a stop, open. Bit waits for the next puff of smoke from the cragged nose. When it doesn’t come, a knot builds in his chest. He lifts his head from Abe’s shoulder. A slow purple spreads over the old man’s lips; a fog, an ice, grows over his eyeballs. Stillness threads itself through the old man.

At Bit’s back, Handy talks of the music tour he is going on in a few days, to spread the word of Arcadia. . be gone for a couple of months, but I have faith in you Free People. I’m your guru, your Teacher, but not your Leader. Because when you’ve got a good enough Teacher, you’re all your own Leaders . . and the people around Bit laugh a little, and somewhere little Pooh screams, and Hannah’s hand comes from Bit’s side and smoothes down his cap, which has come half off, his one ear cold.

Handy says, Remember the foundations of our community. Say them with me. The voices rise: Equality, Love, Work, Openness to the Needs of Everyone.

A song boils up, Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us , they sing. Abe shifts under Bit to the rhythm. Sing a song full of hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun . . the song ends.

A silence. An inhale. In the great Om that rises from the mass of Free People, startled crows speckle up from Arcadia House roof. The sunrise blooms all over them.

In such perfect dawn, even the old man is beautiful, the blue of his beard under the newly luminous skin of his cheek, the softness in his jaw, the tufts in his ears touched golden. He has been gentled in living light. He has been made good.