T. Boyle - Drop City

The bonfire. Of course. A buzz went through the room. Norm could do that-he could wake people up, turn them on, change the vibe of a whole room just by striding through the door. And Star saw that he'd dressed for the occasion too, emergency or no, in a wide-brimmed suede hat with a chin strap and a fringed jacket cut from the same material. The suede was a deep amber, the color of honey at the bottom of the jar, and he'd cinched a blue bandanna round his throat to set it off. That wasn't all: his glasses were taped together and a slash of white sticking plaster bisected his right eyebrow, not in a way that made him look like a victim or an invalid or anything, but somehow-Star couldn't think of the word, and then she could-_jaunty.__ And Premstar. She'd been here all of a week, and she'd done nothing but giggle and play up to Norm as if she was some kind of sex toy or something, and here she was dressed up in a sheer white nightgown like the ingenue in some vampire movie. And her hair-it was braided in two blond ropes that rose up off her brow like a layer cake.

Star turned to Marco, and for just an instant she felt the clamps let go of her. “That hair,” she whispered, feeling buoyant suddenly, feeling stoned all over again, “that's what _I__ call an emergency.”

The whole room watched as Norm led Premstar to the table, where he pulled out a chair for her with the kind of exaggerated gallantry that announced to everybody they'd been balling ten minutes ago, handed her the joint and leapt up onto the worn oak planks. “People,” he shouted, “brothers and sisters, this is my rap and I'm like more than grievously sorry to have to lay it on you tonight of all nights and even before we light the bonfire and dance, and I mean we _are__ going to shake it out, believe me, we are going to _dance__ like nobody has ever danced, I mean we are going to _reinvent__ the whole trip of dancing for now and forever, but this has been coming down a long time now and there's no denying it, no postponing it anymore, and I've just _got__ to get it out, so bear with me…” He stopped right there, and nobody said a word, nobody so much as breathed.

Star found Marco's arm and pulled it up over her shoulder like a cloak. Her heart was pounding now too, along with her head, a little hammer there striking over and over like in the TV commercials-she wasn't going back to Peterskill no matter what happened, not if Drop City closed down tonight. She was going to stay here, right here, and she didn't care what Norm said or how bad it was.

Norm bent low to light the joint for Premstar, and Premstar took a hit and Norm watched in a proprietary way as she passed it on to Reba before he straightened up again and looked out over the room. “I'm telling you the bad news first, but remember what the _I Ching__ says-'Perseverance Furthers'-and you are all, every one of you brothers and sisters, going to _know__ that the good vibes outweigh the bad and that we _will__ persevere in our mission and our philosophy and all the love and truth and the beautiful vibes of Drop City and everything we've accomplished here in spite of the fascists beating at the door.” Another pause. His voice dropped. “Only we won't be here. Not on this property.”

If there was any air left in the room, it was gone now, sucked right out the window. Not here? What was he talking about?

“The fuck we won't!” Jiminy jumped up out of his chair, his hair windmilling round his shoulders. His fist was balled, and he brought it down on the table at Norm's feet, and then rocked back into himself, trembling all over. The day hadn't been kind to him either, Star could see that.

“It's over, people,” Norm sighed, and he never even glanced at Jiminy, just let his gaze seek out each face in the crowd, one after another, like beads on a string. “The bureaucrats've won the war. The pencil-pushers, the accountants, the _man.__ We're history here, and you better get used to it, because the straight world is moving in.”

Everybody was aroused now. Or no: they were incensed. “Bullshit!” a voice shouted from the far side of the room. “We won't let them!”

“No!” Maya joined in, nothing to her voice but textured air, her glasses flashing in the glare of the overhead lights like a shield, and what was with the lights, Star was wondering, why feed PG&E? Was Norm staging this? Was that it?

And then a voice she recognized, knew so intimately it was as if she were speaking herself: “Come on, Norm, come on, man, don't let us down.” It was Ronnie, across the room, his face pinched and his eyes swollen in his head. He looked terrible. Looked as if he'd been buried a week and dug up again. But that voice, that tone-there was something raw and desperate in it, a quaver she recognized from all those late-night disquisitions on God, the futility of life and how impossible it was to find a good FM station in the flatlands, and she understood in that moment how much all this meant to him. Ronnie. Pan. He needed Drop City as much as she did. “Come on, Norm,” he nagged. “Come _on.__”

Norm bowed his head a minute, as if all the fuss were too much for him. He dug at his beard, pushed the hat brim up off his brow so that the bandage flared out like an accusation. “The bulldozers'll be here inside of a week. And that's whether the pigs come back and lock me up or not, because let me give it to you straight, people-by order of the _judge,__ and you can look it up, Judge Vincent T. Everard, the Right and Honorable, they're going to take down every substandard dwelling on the place, and that's their words, not mine, because I say _substandard,__ my ass.”

“Right on!” Mendocino Bill shouted, and then they were all shouting, a dizzy reeling tightly wound gabble of voices-no, they wouldn't budge, they'd fight, they'd chain themselves to the gates-but all Star could think of was the naked hills and the rubble of the yurts and huts and plastic sheeting all rolled up like a frayed blanket, and would they spare the treehouse? Would they see it, even?

She drifted in and out of it then, because that was when the joint worked its way to her and she touched her lips to it and tasted her brothers' and sisters' communion in the wetness of it and filled her lungs with the dense sweet smoke that was going to knock her headache down and out for the count and fill her every cell and fiber with bliss, the bliss she needed and deserved and wanted because that was what this life was all about, wasn't it? Norm went on and on, ranting about the county, about Mr. Jones and the plastic society that spawned him, about conformity and hate and love and the _I Ching.__ He must have talked nonstop for half an hour, his voice dipping and raging and looping back on itself until it was a kind of white noise and the words couldn't touch her-she'd had enough bad vibes and negativity for one day. Enough. Enough, already. And she was about to get to her feet and say just that-_Enough, and let's sleep on it and see what the morning brings__-when the room fell silent.

She looked round her, and it was as if she'd just awakened.

Norm was still up there on the table, the artificial light bleeding from his face. He'd just delivered the good news, the promise that was going to redeem them all and resurrect Drop City, and it came in three interconnected syllables that didn't sound like a promise at all-it was more like a joke, or maybe a dream. She couldn't even be sure she'd heard him right, and before she knew what she was doing, she was raising her hand, raising her hand and flapping it at the end of her wrist as if she were wedged behind a tiny shellacked desk back in elementary school. “Norm, Norm!” she cried amidst a tumult of voices, everybody talking at once, everybody shouting, but she was on her feet now and he was looking right at her through the clear hard lenses of his taped-up glasses as if she were the only one in the room. “Norm, did you say _Alaska?__”