I’m going to die.
Ann imagined her breakfast streaming behind her at fifty miles an hour. The vigor of vomiting might even throw her from the bike.
They were climbing higher. The road was narrow, and the curves were switchbacks. The forest was dense and at times dark. The redwoods were regal, several times the height of telephone poles.
Then patches of ranch land opened up. The road kept going. They flew on through La Honda, past the turnoffs into town, and shortly afterwards they found the entrance to the private lane. A large hand-painted sign on stilts greeted them.
WELCOME, WORLD.
DO YOUR OWN THING,
THE TREES WILL SMILE
The bumpy lane led across a bridge to a long ranch-style house. Stephen cut the engine, and they could hear a Motown tune tootling from a distant radio.
“Redwoods in the front yard,” she cried. “Get a load of that stump! Big enough to dance on.”
He was not agog. Redwoods were a dime a dozen.
It was shadowy among the trees, and some laughing children were running along, hiding behind them.
“Hide-’n’-go-seek must be really interesting here,” Ann said. “You could circle around a tree like a squirrel, always out of view.”
That was the sort of comment that people often ignored, she thought. When she tried to make small talk, they didn’t notice.
Several people lived there, Albert had told her. You never knew who might be around. A friendly girl greeted them and left quickly to get the Chief from his studio. The children were squealing, invisible monkeys in the woods.
A different girl, wearing a long skirt patterned with parrots, brought a pot of herb tea and a tray of mugs outside to the gigantic stump.
“He’ll be here in a minute,” she said. “He knows Albert. I just came here two months ago.”
Ann, still staggering from the ride, asked for the bathroom. Removing her sunglasses, she tried to tackle her tangled hair in the dim mirror. She could find no electric light, but a squat scented candle was burning on a rickety table.
The girl in the parrot skirt set a plate of misshapen cookies on a patch of moss on the stump. She was humming “Good Day Sunshine.”
“I love the sunrise here,” she said. “I never miss it.”
Ann and Stephen each ate a cookie while the girl poured the tea.
“The cookies are supposed to be the shape of California, but the batter was runny.”
The Chief appeared. He owned the house and let friends live there rent-free if they did chores. He was a large, red-bearded man, whose voice reverberated through the trees. He had been in class with Albert, and for a while they spoke of Albert and his job in Kentucky and his gregarious personality and how Ann knew him.
“I didn’t really know Albert that well,” the Chief said. “Buzz knew him. Buzz moved to Santa Cruz last year.”
“Albert mentioned Buzz,” said Ann.
“Albert wrote such funny stories,” the Chief said with a blast of laughter. “We laughed and laughed. He wrote about his Granny and her bean patch and his Uncle Rooster who got his nickname because he carried around a red chicken when he was a kid. We never heard anything like his stories.”
“He sounds like a redneck,” said Stephen.
“What do you mean by ‘redneck’?” Ann asked.
“Oh, farmers. Rubes, hayseeds.”
“My father is a farmer,” Ann said. “Albert is not a farmer, and my father is not a hayseed either.”
“Hayseeds are my favorite people,” the Chief said, staring at Stephen. “Albert is an original, always full of entertaining ideas. I’d love to see him again.”
He spoke of Albert as if he were a curiosity, Ann thought.
“What do you people do here?” Stephen blurted. “Is this a commune?”
“Nothing that requires labels,” said the Chief. He pressed his lips together and turned his head.
Ann thought Stephen must be thinking that these seemed like people whose time had come and gone, the party over, the leaders drifting away into myth. They seemed kind, but she couldn’t find what Albert had so urgently wanted her to experience here. He had stressed how he had been there at the beginning—when the bohemians of Perry Lane discovered LSD through Ken Kesey when he was a guinea pig at the Veterans Hospital. Albert claimed he had “tripped” probably fifty times. He spoke of that time as if it was the dawn of an era, like the Industrial Revolution or the Romantic period.
After a while, Stephen announced that they were leaving. “I have an important paper to write on The Divine Comedy.”
He rolled his helmet in his hands as if it were a skull of someone he had personally slain. When he was out of earshot, Ann apologized to the Chief. “I don’t really know him.”
“Don’t mention it. We’re all on the path of learning.”
He gazed into her face too long. She craned her neck to see the redwood tops.
“I’ve gone back to school to study physics,” he said. “I’m studying the patterns of brain waves in meditative states. There’s a new frontier of consciousness that begs our attention.”
Ann thought he must mean acid, but he seemed serious and thoughtful.
The girl in the parrot skirt was admiring the motorcycle.
“My favorite color,” she said. “This is snazzy.”
Ann observed that Stephen was flattered and would have taken the girl riding on the bike and left Ann there.
“It’s an Electra Glide. A Panhead,” Stephen said to the girl.
“Why’s it called a Panhead?” As if she cared deeply.
“Because the rocker-arm covers resemble pie pans, see?”
“Oh.”
She twisted around in her skirt, and the parrots seemed to move, at a loss for words. The girl would have trouble riding the bike in that skirt, Ann thought.
“I NEVER MET such a bunch of phonies,” Stephen said as they were leaving. “Vapid, pretentious! ‘The world will smile!’ What a bunch of fakes!”
He cranked the engine before Ann could reply.
The ride back was milder, more familiar. Gripping his hard waist now was like hugging a fence post. Her anger dispelled her fear. She had never been sure what a redneck was, but now the sound of it made her bridle.
At his house, he removed his jacket and then his motorcycle boots. In the bathroom, she removed the madras kerchief and tried to figure out her matted hair. Apparently it was in a permanent state, so she retied the kerchief. She blamed Stephen for preventing her from relaxing in the shade of the redwoods with some people she might have enjoyed, although she admitted that she was disappointed with them. Albert would hear from her.
When Ann emerged from the bathroom, Stephen was standing there in his undershirt. He cocked his head toward the absurdly neat bed, which was sandwiched between the Buddha and the tiger statue.
“I’m going home,” she said, glad that her car was in his driveway.
“Don’t you want to stay?”
Stephen was fumbling with her sweater button.
“Didn’t we have a nice ride?” he said, rubbing her shoulder.
She pulled away and aimed for the door.
“I have to go,” she said. “I have to write an important paper myself.”
He stared at her for a moment—incredulous or contemptuous, or both.