T. Boyle - Drop City

“Yeah, right, and who's going to decide who comes in and who doesn't? What, are we going to like hire pigs, is that it?” This was Verbie, swirling green-pink like a fruit drink in a blender. “Norm, what do you think? You going to be our policeman?”

Norm Sender was sitting cross-legged on the table, a cowbell suspended from a suede cord round his neck. He didn't even look up. “No way.”

“The problem,” Alfredo was saying, and his voice was strained now, as if he were trying to hold something back and it was choking him, “the problem is the shit in the woods. And everybody in this room is guilty-”

“Including the dogs,” a voice boomed.

“Right, including the dogs. But it's unsanitary, people, and I mean, people aren't even bothering to bury it, that's our own people, the Drop City people-the weekend hippies just fling their trash-and their excrement-anywhere they feel like it. And, speaking of which, there was that incident last night, in the back house, and you all know what I'm talking about.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Verbie said two words-“Sky Dog”-and then somebody called out: “It was the spades.”

“Really?” Alfredo let his eyes creep over the faces in the room. “Well, I don't know, maybe we better ask Pan over here-he was there, weren't you, Pan? Why don't you tell us about it? Come on, _Ronnie,__ enlighten us all-tell us about peace and love, huh?”

Ronnie had been lying there limp amongst the pillows, his feet skewed at the nether ends of his stretched-out legs, but now he came up off the floor so fast he startled her-and startled the dog too. Suddenly he was standing there trembling in his cutoffs and tie-dye, and she was wishing she had a hit of something, anything, because this was Ronnie when the finger was pointing at him, this was Ronnie the victim, Ronnie the crucified saint. “I told you once, man, and I'm telling all of you now, I had nothing to do with it-”

“Yeah, right. It was Sky Dog, wasn't it?” Alfredo hissed. “And the _spades.__”

Ronnie let his eyes bleed out of his head, cool Ronnie, poor Ronnie, and he spread his palms wide in extenuation. “I mean, it's me, Pan, you all know me. You really think I would do something like that, no matter how stoned I was-? Fourteen, she was only fourteen, jail bait no matter how you slice it. I'm not like that, I'm not that kind of person. You all know me, right? Right?”

Somebody up front, one of the founding members, stood up now too. Star couldn't see him at first, so she lifted her head up off the pillows and felt Marco adjust his position beside her. It was the guy-_cat__-everybody called Mendocino Bill, two hundred fifty pounds of hair wedged inside a pair of coveralls you could have used as a drop-cloth. “Listen, people, this isn't the issue, and I'm with Pan, he's my brother and I believe in him-I mean, what is this, a kangaroo court or something? No, look, the issue is our black brothers out there. They've been intimidating people, and all they want to do is drink cheap wine and score dope and have one big nonstop party-and it's at our expense. Because they sure don't miss a meal, do they?”

“Racist,” Verbie said. People began to hiss.

“It's not like that at all, man, and that's not fair”-Mendocino Bill's voice went up a notch-“because I of all people was in Selma and Birmingham and I wonder where the rest of you were cause I sure as hell don't remember seeing any of you down there, and I'm telling you I don't care who it is, we've got to police ourselves, people, or the Sonoma County sheriff'll come in here and do it for us-and I don't think there's anybody here wants that.”

That was when everybody started talking at once, accusations flying, people making bad jokes, somebody hitting a sour note on a harmonica over and over and Ronnie slipping out of the spotlight and settling back into the nest of pillows like a lizard disappearing into a crevice. Lydia took hold of his hand and Merry gave him a million-kilowatt smile, but he reached over to her, to Star, to make his plea. He was shaking his head, and this was for Marco too, because Marco was right there with his eyelids rolled back and his ears perked: “I swear,” Ronnie said. “I swear I didn't do a thing.”

“Bum's rush!” Jiminy shouted. “Kick 'em out!”

“Who?”

“The spades! Kick 'em the fuck out! Norm, come on, _Norm__-”

All eyes went to Norm Sender where he sat Buddha-like in the center of the table, and for a fraction of a moment, everyone exhaled. But Norm was having none of it-he ducked his head and shrank down to half his size. “Land Access to Which Is Denied _No__ One,” he said.

“Somebody's got to do something-it's like _Lord of the Flies__ out there, man.”

“Oh, yeah, sure it is-and what's it like in here, then?”

“Hey, fuck you.”

“No, fuck _you!__”

The whole thing was too much. Star lay there, propped up on her elbows, wishing they'd all just shut up, wondering where all the harmony and joy had gone to and why everybody had to hassle all the time, and then she looked at Ronnie, looked into his eyes, and saw a cold hard nugget of triumph there, sealed in, impervious to all things hip and the brotherly and the sisterly too. She was going to say something to him, she was going to call him out, when she felt the warmth leave her side as if it had evaporated and she was looking at Marco's frayed jeans and the dead bleached leather of his boots planted on the floor. “Hey,” he was saying, “hey, everybody,” and he put two fingers to his lips and produced one of those nails-on-the-blackboard sort of whistles you hear at ball games and rock concerts.

The room went quiet. Everybody was watching him. “Listen,” he said, “why doesn't somebody just go talk to them?”

“Talk to them?” Alfredo was incredulous. “If they wanted to talk they'd be here now, wouldn't they? But no, they're up there drunk as usual, looking to ball some other fourteen-year-old chick.” He glanced round the room. “Who's going to do it? You? Are you volunteering?”

“Yeah,” Marco said, nodding slowly. “I guess I am.”

That first day, the day when he lifted her up into his tree as if the breeze was blowing right through her, she'd felt like the heroine of some fairy tale, like Rapunzel-or no, that wasn't right. Like Leda maybe, Leda all wrapped in feathered glory. _Leda and the Swan.__ That had been her favorite poem in Lit class, and she'd read it over and over till it was part of her, all that turmoil and fatality spinning out of a single unguarded moment, and that was something, it was, but what made her face burn and her fingers tingle was the weirdness of the act itself. Picturing it. Dreaming it. The flapping of the wings, the smell, the violence. All the other poems in the anthology were about flowers or death or Grecian urns, but this, this was about fucking a swan. She remembered her amazement, wondering how that could be-did birds even _have__ penises? — and not just the mechanics of it, but the scene itself. Did he carry her off into the sky, or did it just feel that way? How big was he? And whose seed was he carrying-Zeus's, the professor said-but how did that work out, and wouldn't Helen be half-bird, then?

Marco had handed her a joint and she'd taken it reflexively. She'd had three days to clear her head, nothing stronger than Red Zinger running through her veins, Maya peeling onions and rattling on in her thin spidery voice about getting beyond drugs to a natural high, the oneness of the gurus, pure bliss in an overheated kitchen, but three days was enough. She needed something to kick-start her again, a quicker way to alter her consciousness than chanting _Om Mani Pema Hung__ a thousand times, because her consciousness was clogged like a drain with all the residue of Ronnie and the dregs of back home. Plus, she had to admit she felt awkward in the presence of this new _cat__ with his clothes off and his red-gold hair swinging like a curtain across his face and masking his eyes, because now that she was actually up there in his aerie, everything had changed. He didn't know what to say, and neither did she. The joint was an offering. It was the great equalizer, the holy communion, get wrecked and stare off into space and who actually needed to talk? They smoked it down to the last disintegrating nub of a roach, pressing it finger to finger, lip to lip, and neither of them said a word.