T. Boyle - Drop City

But that was hours ago. What Pan was concerned about now was meat, and to that end he'd sequestered a package of Safeway hot dogs in the depths of the refrigerator and stashed an eight-pack of spongy supermarket buns under a pile of dirty clothes in the back bedroom, and as the cruiser worked its slow sure way up the road-moving so slowly, in fact, it barely even spun the dust off its tires-Pan was thinking he'd be building a little fire soon, after which he'd have a couple of hot dogs slathered with mustard and sweet pickle relish, and anybody who happened to be around, weekend hippies and part-time heads included, would be welcome to join him.

He was sitting on the front porch, Merry, Maya and Mendocino Bill settled in beside him and some new cat in a serape and high-crowned straw hat sprawled on the steps (_his__ trip was Krishna and there was no way to shut him up about it unless you took a claw hammer to the back of his head, and for the past half hour Pan had been giving it some real consideration). Merry wasn't going to eat any meat, or Maya either, that was for sure. Maybe Mendocino Bill, but Ronnie really didn't give a shit about Mendocino Bill one way or the other so it hardly mattered. “Krishna is love,” the new cat said, and the cruiser eased into the space in front of the railing like a foot slipping into a shoe. Two cops, each a replica of the other, got out.

They stood there in the dirt a moment, shifting their eyes around, two almost-young men, and what currents were _they__ floating on? Lean, narrow-hipped, all but hairless, they looked as if they'd been specially bred in some police kennel somewhere, and Ronnie could picture it, the women staked out on chains and the bull-headed men going at them till they got the litter just right. _Woof-woof.__ He studied their faces, but their faces gave away nothing. Their eyes, though-their eyes lit up every particle of dust, alive to every gesture, every nuance, eyes that could see through walls, through clothes, through flesh, and you'd have to be crazy not to feel the heat of them.

As the car doors slammed in unison, the two yellow dogs slunk out from beneath the porch to sniff at the cops' boots, and Freak, the one with the hacked-off tail, seized the opportunity to lift a leg and piss against the sidewall of the near tire. The cops never so much as shrugged. They took a minute to square their shoulders and adjust their belts, running their hands idly over the butts of their guns and truncheons and the rest of their head-cracking paraphernalia, then turned their attention to the porch. “You live here?” the one to the left asked, addressing Ronnie but letting his cold blue eyes jump to Merry, Maya, Mendocino Bill and beyond, where the depths of the house stirred with a thick, lazy batter of activity.

Though half of Drop City had melted off into the woods at first sight of the cruiser, Ronnie played it cool. He had nothing to fear. He'd never been in trouble with the law-his luck had held through every transaction, every furtive hit and airless squeeze of the plunger-and his father's cousin the psychologist had gotten him a 4-F on the grounds of mental incapacity. Which is not to say he didn't recognize the pigs for what they were. “I live on the green planet earth,” he said, showing all his teeth.

“That's right, man,” the new cat put in, “and it was Brahma that put us here-and Lord Vishnu that preserves us.”

“Right on,” Maya said, and then Merry, flinging her hair back to expose her painted breasts, said, “You live here too. We all live here. On the planet, dig?” And everybody on the porch, even the new cat, flashed the peace sign.

The cop lifted one shining boot to the dried-out blasted paint-stripped plank of the porch's second riser, and rested it there, leaning into his knee and focusing tightly on Pan. “Who's in charge here?” he wanted to know, and his voice was reasonable yet, soft and reasonable, as if he were addressing a clutch of fourth graders or maybe the town drunk stewing in his own juices. “Who's the landlord? The owner?”

Dale Murray stepped through the screen door then, just in time to field the question. Dale was a head of the old school-No moment on this earth was rich enough to risk forgoing drugs for, that was his motto-and he'd blown into the ranch one night last week on a fig green Honda motorcycle that sounded as if he'd attached grenade launchers to the muffler pipes. He was wearing a pair of blue-and-white-striped bell-bottoms, he was shirtless, rigidly muscled and deeply tanned; bells and beads and the yellowed teeth of some unlucky carnivore dangled from his neck, and a guitar was fixed at his waist like a big wooden cummerbund. He gave each of the cops a hallowed look and said, “Listen, I'm not going to give you the runaround and say God's the owner here and we're all mutual on this earth, you and me and your wife Loretta and Richard Milhous Nixon too-no, I'm not going to insult your intelligence and waste your time because I know how hard you guys work and the kind of shit people are always laying on you.” He paused. The cops' faces hardened, and the near one, the one who'd been asking the questions, drew his leg back and stood up square. “I won't lie,” Dale Murray said, “-I am. I'm in charge here.”

The talkative cop glanced at the top sheet in his summons book, then brought his eyes back up to drive them like staples into Dale Murray's. “You must be Norman L. Sender, then, is that right? Owner of an orange-and-white VW van with a peace sign painted on the driver's side panel and the California plate O-W-S-L-E-Y-1? Is that right?”

Dale Murray tugged at the loose ends of his hair. Ronnie could hear him breathing, a ragged intake and outflow that sounded like a machine in need of oil.

“Wanted for leaving the scene of an accident,” the cop went on, “in an obviously intoxicated state. That wouldn't be you, would it?”

“No, sir,” Dale Murray said, and there wasn't a flicker of recognition from anybody on the porch. “No, sir,” he repeated, and his accent-what was it, cowboy? Southern redneck? — seemed to thicken, “I didn't say that.”

The second cop had moved in to close the gap. “You got ID?” he wanted to know, and his voice wasn't reasonable at all-it was the standard-issue no-nonsense truncheon-swinging voice they must have handed out with the badges. “All of you,” he snarled, “I want to see some ID. Pronto.”

Nobody moved. Out on the periphery of the dried-up lawn, too far away for it to matter, Verbie was juggling three or four grapefruits in a shaft of sunlight while her sister danced round her like a mental case, strutting and writhing to some unheard melody. There was dogshit everywhere, piles of it like miniature termite mounds marching off into the distance. Two staved-in cars listed over their ruined springs to the side of the house, amidst a midden of old lumber and shingles. From the back, the sounds of festivity, rock and roll, the odd splash and shout.

“Anybody here own a horse?” the first cop asked, posting the soft missive of his question in the slot left open for him by his partner.

That was when Mendocino Bill, all two hundred fifty pounds of him, shot up out of his chair as if he'd been launched, a question of his own on his lips: “You got a fucking warrant, man?”

Before it was over, everybody on the porch had to do penance, Ronnie included. As soon as Mendocino Bill opened his mouth, both cops went for him, even as Merry, Maya and the Krishna cat began chanting “Peace and Love, Peace and Love, Off the Pigs, Peace and Love.” Ronnie-_Pan__-gave the cops as wide a berth as he could, but he found himself crushed up against the railing as they dragged the big man from the porch, kicked his legs out from under him and forced his pale blubbery arms behind his back for the wedding of the cuffs. “He's not here,” Maya squeaked, “Norm's not here!” The cops ignored her. They weren't even breathing hard, and what they were scenting now was a kind of freedom they'd only dreamed of: hippies, a whole parade of them, resisting arrest.