Life - Part One
Chapter 1: The Garden
Charlie Ash arrived at the New Roots Land Co-op on a fine spring day in 1978, with his partner of two years’ copulations, Jan. The road-weary couple carried backpacks unsteadily down a steep, rutted old skid road: Charlie with a gangly, almost awkward stride; Jan with a heavier gait, complaining about the rocks in the road. With a hundred and sixty dollars in cash in his wallet, Charlie recalled that other spring day a decade earlier when he first arrived in California, with thirty dollars to his name. Now, instead of the hot dry air and glinting chrome of Barstow, he took in the heady, humid fullness of the British Columbia interior rain forest in late May: the sweet incense of pine and fir, the lush dark green glow of the burgeoning undergrowth. Eight years, to be exact: but it seemed like more. Along with the thicker wallet, there was now twenty thousand in the bank. And instead of John the dope dealer to travel with, there was Jan.
No one else seemed to be around.
They made their way into the interior of the two-hundred acre Co-op, hoping to find someone there to greet them. The few secluded houses they discovered stood empty - looking, Jan remarked, somewhat forlorn. Charlie saw them as "just peaceful." Following the winding skid road through sunshot trees and bright, grassy clearings, the visitors were met with a rustling, in the dense thimbleberry and bracken, of insects, grouse, and small birds; the soaring and diving of ravens overhead, and glimpses of deer bounding just out of sight. All of this they found refreshingly familiar from their initial visit two years earlier. Charlie felt his heart growing. "I kind of get a feeling from this place like it’s home, you know?" Jan looked at him quizzically, but stayed with her own thoughts and impressions as they walked over the swamp road: a cordoroy affair with four-inch saplings laid into the roadbed crossways to keep the mud at bay.
Finally, approaching the main clearing on the central bench, they found everyone working in the garden there, naked, forking manure from an odorous pile onto garden beds. A lean, wispy-bearded old man wearing a cedar-bark hat and wire-rimmed glasses was leaning on his shovel handle off to one side, talking to a dumpy woman with gray-streaked hair and sagging breasts. Charlie recognized them as Robert Kingsley and his wife, Amy - the founders of New Roots Co-op. A younger woman, a stout figure with coarse features and broad smile, was singing as she dug her pitchfork into the pile. Another couple was at the far end of the garden working to put up a fence post, beside a smoldering fire where more posts were being scorched black at their ends.
Charlie felt a little shy, fully clothed as he was, with his new wife beside him. He noticed Jan blushing and thought that she looked uncomfortable, almost forlorn. Her always-sad eyes drooped; her thin lips twitched.
But what the hell. Here they were, it was their chosen place.
"Uh, hi! Remember us, Charlie and Jan, we came once before, and wrote you a letter a couple of months ago . . ."
The singing stopped. Robert and Amy left off their conversation.
"Sure, oh, right." A skinny man with a long ponytail laid his shovel gently on the ground. "Charlie and Jan. I’m Dennis, remember?" He shook Charlie’s hand, then Jan’s limper offering. "Well, make yourselves at home; don’t be shy. Join the party."
Charlie looked down at his clothes.
Jan, with a determined expression on her face, was already unbuttoning her plaid shirt away from her bra.
Why not, then? They peeled everything off, like children before a backyard wading pool, and entered the garden. Jan stood stiffly, her hands folded first in front of her pubic hair, then defiantly behind her; her blond braids hanging just down to her pale nipples. Charlie's own body appeared strange to him, a bony white chest sprouting long brown arms, soft white hips sprouting a tuft of black hair and a limp sack with attached penis. His thin, half-brown legs shifted awkwardly. He glanced at the other bodies and faces, so evenly tanned; everyone there seemed so relaxed. Still he looked around for some tool to distract attention - his own as well as the others' - from nakedness to work. But the group of half a dozen was standing looking at them, waiting instead for some social contribution to their workday.
"We just got in," Charlie said.
A short, nut-brown, frizzy-haired woman said, "From Ontario? Hi, I'm Sybil, the one who's been corresponding with you. I'm the Co-op's secretary."
Charlie smiled politely, wondering if he should offer to shake hands with her. He took a tentative step forward.
"Watch out, you're standing on the carrot bed," said the stout woman who'd been singing.
"Oh." Charlie gingerly stepped away. "Actually it was kind of a roundabout route, through the States. Quite a long trip. Hot down there . . ."
Charlie noticed that Jan was looking at the skinny man's genitals. The guy stood unabashed in front of her, a grin on his sweat-grimed face. He brushed his ponytail back over his shoulder. "Want to help out?" he asked Jan.
She said, "Sure. Can I have a tool?"
Sybil laughed.
A tall man with said to her, "Sybil, you're terrible." While this remark stirred up some muted chuckling, the man went to the side of the garden and brought back a plastic jug of water to pass around, like the ritual joint of the old days. The clear water burbled out of the jug into thirsty mouths and ran down dirt-streaked chins and chests. Charlie realized that he actually felt fairly comfortable in this group. Everyone except the older couple seemed roughly of the same generation, in their late twenties or early thirties. But with the exception of the Kingsleys, Charlie was sure now that he recognized nobody from the first visit he and Jan had made here, two summers before.
Robert Kingsley declined a drink from the jug but extended a hand to shake. His eyes were bright; his grip firm. "Welcome back," he said, looking at both Charlie and Jan. "I hope you'll end up staying longer, this time through."
Supper at the Kingsleys' house: last year's potatoes and squash and frozen corn; a little goat meat; yogurt and home-canned applesauce for dessert. They settled back in the chairs while Amy cleared the plates, and then sipped dandelion-root coffee that she had made.
"You don't have to peel the roots if you don't want to; just scrub them well. Then they all go on a cookie sheet in the oven, bottom shelf, to dry-roast on low heat for maybe an hour. If they get close to burning, it'll taste a little like French-roast. Then when they cool you can grind them up."
Jan looked at Charlie. "How do you like it, Charlie? Should we try to make some? There are still some dandelions around."
"It's not bad. But it wouldn't have got me very far first thing in the morning with that pack of grade-sevens I had this year."
Polite laughter around the table.
Robert said brusquely, "How long were you teaching on that Indian reserve?" His genial mood seemed to Charlie to have soured a little.
"Three years. We were hoping - "
"Yes I know, from your letters. We still don't know what enrollment's going to be like next year. It's been slipping badly since you were here last. The trend now seems to be to forget humanistic education, and just send the kids to be baby-sat at the public elementary school in Galena and the high school in Wentworth."
Jan gave Charlie a troubled look.
Amy asked, "Are there any other jobs you're qualified to do?"
"I've done lots of things," Charlie said. "I guess the real question is, how much is available around here."
Robert spoke tersely: "Not a whole lot. Forestry takes most of it. Living simply is going to help you to make it here as much as any job you can scrounge."
Jan asked Amy, "But your school . . . you still might be hiring new staff for next year? We heard that this year's teachers were leaving."
"That's right. But that's partly to do with a salary cut coming, because of the lower enrollment we've been having. We'll just have to wait and see. Robert's right about a simple lifestyle, though. You might consider putting in a little garden even this summer, if you're planning to stay."
"There's the trial period first," Robert said quickly.
"I know, dear, I know. But these nice young people I'm sure don't have anything to worry about. Then she changed the subject to dandelions again, saying to Jan, "You can also make some fairly tasty wine out of the flowers, you know."
Jan smiled happily. "Hmm . . ."
Robert wanted to stick to the business at hand. "What is it you two are looking for here?"
Charlie didn't think the older man had meant to sound impolite. But a heavy silence descended as everyone waited for their answer. He and Jan had already exchanged a number of personal letters with the Kingsleys as well as with Sybil, the secretary, but now they were on the witness stand. It had to sound good in person. Charlie looked at Jan to begin but she expected him, as usual, to do the talking for them both. "Um - well, as we said in some of our letters, we're looking for a chance to get away from the rat race of the cities, and the little boxes that most people in our society seem to put themselves in. That's why the idea of living cooperatively seemed better: an old idea, really, whose time has come around again, I guess."
Kingsley's hawk eyes sparkled with the challenge of fresh debate. Amy sat benumbed, having been over this ground before, it seemed. "And what sort of cooperative living do you suppose we engage in here?"
Charlie wasn't going to fall for the free-love trap; he already knew that this wasn't a commune, and he wouldn't have been interested if it was. He answered, "To share the land, basically. I mean, to share the ownership of it. Beyond that, to cooperate kind of on a friendly basis on various work projects, animals, gardens, vehicles, that sort of thing - as it makes sense. Not with a whole bunch of regulations about how to cooperate, or having to spend all your time together or anything."
Charlie knew his words were poorly arranged, sounded ignorant and unthoughtful compared to Robert's finely phrased manifestoes for the putting of cooperative visions into practice. Be and Jan, like Robert and Amy, had ideals and visions to follow; and they had followed them here, to the end of the rainbow as they knew it. He also had gathered, from his correspondence with Sybil, that the group had fashioned a pragmatic compromise between group activity and independent space here.
Kingsley pursued the question: "So what, then, do you think is different about living here compared to say, how we relate to the rest of our neighbors in Galena?"
Charlie saw an opportunity here for some respite from this oral examination. "I really can't say, not having lived here."
Amy Kingsley gave Charlie an appreciative little smile. He guessed that finding ways of earning Robert's silence was something Amy herself had learned by long experience.
The man with the ponytail had invited Charlie and Jan to stay the night in his cabin, saving them the trouble of setting up camp right away. They walked over to Dennis's house after supper, carry backpacks and holding hands, silently drinking in the still beauty of the twilight.
Jan halted, startled. Dennis was showering under a black plastic hose hung from a cedar tree. Big deal, Charlie thought. This is what people do here; come on. He kept walking and she followed. But Charlie shuddered at the thought of that cold water, until he saw in the little clearing the coil of hose which the afternoon sun had heated. Dennis grinned, rinsing his long hair: "Be right with you. Door's open, make yourself at home."
It was a handmade house in the woodsy style typical here - if any of those unique creations could be called typical. The design was simple yet functional: a kitchen area, well lit with windows; a step up to a living room area; another step up to a bedroom. More black plastic hose supplied water to the kitchen sink. A couple of kerosene lamps stood on counter and table.
Home, of a sort: the travelers unshouldered their backpacks and sighed, settling onto an old couch.
Dennis came in rubbing a towel over his head, unashamed to dress in the newcomers' company. Charlie felt excited by this freedom from convention he'd seen here; but wondered what effect it would have on Jan.
Dennis at last settled down on the floor in the living room opposite his guests, and rolled a joint for the occasion. Or, maybe it was no occasion at all, but a simple habit, like smoking tobacco. Charlie was tempted to join him, to be sociable, but declined out of deference to Jan's firm refusal.
Dennis did most of the talking, responding to the newcomers' questions about life on the Co-op, the economy of the Galena valley, the climate. They all shared something of their personal travels. In another couple of days, Dennis told them, he was taking off to work for a few weeks on a treeplanting contract. If they wanted, they could stay and mind the house for him. "It'll help keep the bears out," he added. Jan's hand tightened on Charlie's arm. "You got a gun?" Charlie wanted to know.
"Oh, no, you don't need to shoot them. Just talk to them. Or yell a little, if you have to. They'll usually skedaddle pretty quick back into the bush."
"'Usually,'" Jan said.
They gratefully accepted the offer nevertheless. Dennis yawned. It seemed a good time to start laying out the foam pads and sleeping bags on the plank floor. But Charlie still had some nagging questions about the Co-op. He particularly wanted to know what it was like dealing with Robert Kingsley.
Dennis moved to the step of the bedroom to make more room. "Well, Robert's a little old fashioned," he said.
"How do you mean?" Charlie said.
"Oh, the old school of communitarian visionaries. Used to be a Marxist, anarchist wing I guess. Worked with the CCF for a while before he got disenchanted with them. His vision was more radical, more do-it-yourself. So he did it himself, finally, with capital help from others like myself . . . folks just looking for a piece of cheap land, when you get right down to it."
"Oh." This cynicism offended Charlie's idealistic spirit. "So how much do you guys cooperate?"
"About as much as we need to. That's about it. The land's held in common, so there are certain decisions to make as a group. Like membership, installing waterline, use of common garden space, and so on. But most of us spend as little time with each other as with anyone else. We're a bunch of hermits, when you come right down to it. If we liked to spend all our time with people, we'd still be in the city."
Sybil told them a slightly different tale the next day working in the small, circular garden patch behind her tipi. She grew vegetables in the native way, with hills of corn each surrounded by young squash and bean plants. The corn seeds, she told us, had been fertilized with fish: one redfish to each hole.
"Yeah, to a certain extent Dennis is right. We each have our own garden spaces, for instance, because it's just too intense to try to work it all out together, over there in the big garden. It's - 'I worked three days a week all summer, so I get X percent of the cabbages; I donated all the goat manure, so why should I have to pull weeds too?' - that sort of stuff. We work it out as best we can but there's a limit. Amy and Robert seem to like that way of operating; it's another excuse for a meeting. Three hours we spent last week discussing where to put the broccoli bed, and by the end of the meeting nothing had been decided, and the broccoli seedlings had dried up in the sun."
"Whew."
"Yeah. I left early from that meeting cause I'd had enough after an hour. But now there's a movement afoot to say you have to be at all the meetings, and stay to the whimpering end. I guess we'll all have to start inventing valid excuses. But then there will be by-law proposals for defining the kinds of excuses."
"Really! But does everyone agree with that kind of regulation?"
"Shit, no. There's an incredible turnover. Half of us are new this year, and with the trend so far, half will be gone by next year. We're still occupying only six homesites, out of the dozen or so that the Kingsleys keep talking about."
Charlie looked at Jan, she looked at him.
"Yeah, I know what you must be thinking. But you two folks look like you have good heads on your shoulders, a reasonable approach. Maybe the Coop needs people like you to stabilize it, to cool down some of the hot heads on opposite poles of some of these issues."
Sybil instinctively knew just where to strike: Charlie's soft spot for challenge, for believing he could make the world a better place.
"So what do you think?" Jan asked Charlie the next day as they walked down the unpaved road, two miles to the Galena store for groceries. "I dunno. Seems okay to me. What about you?"
She glared at him. "I wanted to know your opinion. Why do you always want to know what I think first?"
"What do you mean? You asked me the question."
"That's because I wanted to know what you thought, before you had my opinion."
"Jesus. Okay, I told you. It seems all right. They have a few problems, I guess. But what group doesn't? Anyway, we have all summer to decide."
"But what if they want to enforce this deadline on memberships, that Dennis was talking about - "
"No, we're safe as long as we've started our trial period."
"But we haven't yet, not officially."
"Then we should get it on the agenda of the next meeting."
"That might not be easy. There's a whole bunch of thorny issues coming up, according to Sybil."
"Like what?" Charlie felt that same discomfort he'd felt the night before, when Jan had gone back to Sybil's tipi at bedtime. Sybil had invited her, and not Charlie, for evening tea.
Jan blushed inexplicably, answering, "Lots of things. Am I supposed to talk only to you, because you're my 'husband'?"
"No. But you sound almost like you're sorry I am."
She said nothing. Against his better judgment Charlie pressed her:
"Are you?"
"Of course not." She put an arm around his waist as they walked, as if to convince him.
The thimbleberries trembled in the slightest of breezes, as if there were bear-ghosts all around.
There were indeed several contentious issues on the agenda of the meeting two weeks later. Robert Kingsley ran the meeting, with a pointer in hand that he used to outline the points to be covered, written in felt pen on large sheets of paper clipped to an easel.
"All right," he said in a long-practiced, patronizing tone of voice - he didn't quite add, "children" or "class," though he had teacher written all over him - "can we begin?" He stopped to stare at Sybil, who was talking to June, the stocky woman singing in the garden the first day. Seven others were in attendance: Amy Kingsley, lanky Ken Arntzen and his black-pigtailed partner Jennifer, bearded Ellis, a small, scholarly-looking young man named Harold, and a woman named Christie, who wore overalls and nothing else. Jan had picked a cushion next to Sybil; Charlie sat farther around the circle between Jennifer and Harold.
A begrudging quiet settled on the room and Robert spoke out in a ringing voice. "Can everyone see the items we have to discuss on the agenda?" He glanced at his watch. "We have a little over two hours. Now, I see a half-hour for the first item, waterline. Then there are a few things to discuss about the common garden, another half-hour. Twenty minutes on the goat-problem - "
"Goat problem?" Ellis was the owner of the two goats on the Co-op. "Who says there's a - "
"I can tell you a little about that," Ken Arntzen said with a Nordic accent; but before he could elaborate, Robert cut him off.
"When we get to it - if you please, gentlemen. We're already overtime by fifteen minutes and we haven't even begun yet. Then there's the issue of new membership, a trial period for Charlie and Jan, another forty-five minutes."
"We might need more," Harold remarked flatly.
He was the one person the prospective members hadn't gotten round to meeting with, yet. He kept odd hours, sleeping most days, or at least both times they'd peeked in on him. Did he have a problem with them?
Ken reported on the progress of the waterline: plans for a settling tank at the intake in the creek; purchase of lengths of plastic pipe; estimates from a couple of backhoe operators in Galena. A rough timeline was put forward, with work crews scheduled to start in two weeks' time.
The garden was a stickier issue. Fencing had been bought and half the posts dug in but now Sybil disagreed with the size of the area.
"It's just not working out," she complained with a pout.
"Can you expound a little on that?" Robert held the pointer with his hands as if it were a sabre.
"Well, like last week I transplanted my cabbage seedlings into the bed there, and - "
"Your cabbage seedlings?" June interrupted. "I thought this was a cooperative venture."
"Yeah, me too," Sybil shot back. "But what happened? Nobody watered those seedlings and when I got back from Vancouver they were all dead - dried up. Nobody bothered to water them."
Ellis spoke: "I should think the person who plants something needs to take some responsibility for their care."
Amy broke in now in a shrill voice: "Yes, but look. There has to be some give and take. The way I see it - "
Robert was strangely passive during this exchange, only checking his watch from time to time until, at the end of a fruitless round of recrimination and abuse, he announced, "Time's up on that item. Can we move on to talking about the goat problem?"
"Wait a minute!" Ellis said in a sudden fury. "We haven't got anywhere on the garden question yet."
Robert responded blandly, "No. Did you expect we would?"
Amy appeared indignant. "Of course we should. This is our common ground. This is where we come together to share in the life here. If we can't have agreement about growing our food, what's the point of the rest of it?"
Robert's eyes grew wide: "I hardly think it's fair to put the validity of the entire project on the line in this question of whose cabbages are whose - "
"I move we just subdivide that garden and be done with these endless hassles over it, meeting after meeting."
"I agree," Jennifer said.
Christie had offered nothing to the discussion thus far, only fidgeting silently. Now she appeared on the verge of tears. "I agree with Amy. We have to work this one out. So what if we have to spend a half hour on it? What's more important than learning to live with our Mother?"
"Come on," Ken said. "Let's get on the goats, or we won't have any garden left to talk about."
Robert took the matter in hand. "I agree. We'll put the garden on the agenda of the next meeting again" - he sighed - "and now let's see if we can get this goat question tied down." He grinned at his pun. No one else so much as snickered.
The goat question fared no better than the garden question. It seemed they were continually roaming into people's gardens. Opinion was polarized: some believed in the principle of free range, with the responsibility of householders to fence their own home garden plots; others took the opposite view that the goats needed to be tethered or corralled at all times. Ellis was the only member keeping goats at the present time, but he supplied milk to a good number of the rest, and this link, along with some support on principle, supplied him with enough weight to counter the interests of the gardeners. Robert was more vocal in this debate, speaking against the free-ranging domestic animals. But since the group operated by consensus, he carried no more authority than anyone else. Charlie had the feeling that he bore this as a handicap to his true destiny as an autocrat.
When the matter of the trial period was finally brought forward, Harold looked at his watch and left. Robert let him go without a word - and then spoke kindly on our behalf: "We have with us two people whom we met two years ago and who made a favorable impression with us then." (No one bothered to quibble with the implied, and inaccurate, inclusiveness of the speaker's royal "we.") "During the meeting we haven't heard from them - out of politeness and in the interest of the streamlined working out of our process, I'm sure." I smiled and nodded affirmatively. "But we understand that Charlie and Jan indeed have serious intentions to join our group and so we would like to extend to them full consideration in the form of a trial period for resident membership." He beamed, the benificent ruler with his grace for the unlanded. Was the question already settled, then?
Harold was gone . . . but now Ken spoke up: "We do need to approve this first, after appropriate discussion."
"All right," Robert agreed. "Does anyone have any objections?"
"It's not a matter of objections," Ken continued, "but of taking care of the wider issues. For instance, have we ever decided for sure how many homesites we have available for new members? As I've said before, there has to be some limit - "
"We have our my original charter to refer to," Robert reminded him. "Outlining a land development plan comprising some twelve to fifteen homesites."
"Yes," Ellis said, "in your original charter. That was a document springing from your personal vision, Robert."
Amy put her hand up to speak. Before Robert could recognize her Ellis added, "And Amy's as well, fine."
Amy's hand slid down, slowly, a placid, bare white snake.
Ellis's black beard worked efficiently. "But in the new charter that part was left out, if you'll remember, because we couldn't agree on a number. I agree with Ken, this issue needs to be decided before we're overcrowded. Otherwise we just erode our land and resource base piecemeal, homesite by homesite. No offense to Charlie or Jan."
He looked across the room at Charlie with honest eyes, and at Jan sitting stoically beside Charlie, staring at the floor in front of her.
"I'd like to speak for going ahead with these folks at this time," Christie said. Charlie liked her straightforward delivery, her calm and even tone. She was a mediatator, he guessed. You could tell by her erect posture on the cushion, the easy folding of her legs with one crossed gently over the other. Maybe she'd be someone he could start doing some sitting with, again. Living with Jan, it was hard; she had no patience for spiritual practice. "We're only five homesites now. That's a long way from fifteen. We could go ahead with this trial period like we promised Charlie and Jan, and decide the upper limit in the meantime."
"Okay," said Sybil, "but there's this other gray area about homesite residences, too, to think about. There's three adults on our homesite. Suppose Ellis, June and I all eventually decide to have other partners. If we wanted to stay on our homesite we'd likely want to build separate dwellings. If every homesite went like that - "
"Unlikely," Ken said.
Jennifer, his silent partner, said, "Oh, I don't know."
"You don't know?" There was nervous laughter from the others. "So what don't I know?"
Robert seemed embarrassed and intervened. "Can I bring us back to the topic at hand? Do we agree we have room for one more homesite at the present time?"
"If we make a commitment to arrive at a long-range policy during this trial period," Ellis said. "I think that's Harold's concern as well."
"He should have stayed to voice it, then," Robert said with a touch of malice.
"Nevertheless, that concern is shared by others and I think it needs to be a precondition of these guys joining."
Robert sighed. "All right, then. Does anyone have any further objections to going ahead with the trial period for Charlie and Jan?"
"Why don't you say, "Jan and Charlie," Sybil admonished him.
"Jan and Charlie," Robert replied dutifully.
Ken laughed sardonically, rose and stretched.
Amy said, "Oh, I forgot to offer tea. Would anyone like some?"
Sybil stood up, stretched, and said brightly, "First lets have a hug in honor of the trial period for our prospective new members."
"Their first hurdle," Ellis said, smiling.
The group stood up on shaky, cramped legs and huddled together briefly in the center of the floor.
It was a magic moment for Charlie, both charged and peaceful. They had their three months now. Time enough to uncover and work out whatever problems Harold or anyone else might have with them - or problems they might have with being there themselves. They had given up their lucrative teaching careers, their proximity to family, their ties to mainstream society and felt ready, finally to get "back to the land." But were they ready for the group approach?
Charlie knew that Jan, in many ways a private person, had her hesitations. There were new social arrangements and conventions to reckon with; conflicting motivations and desires; loves, fears, joys, resentments, ideals and limitations - all the stuff that fills psychology texts and therapy seminars. Still, Charlie was excited about the prospects of joining. It might mean the end of his lifelong travels looking for just the right place.
Arms unlinked, the group broke apart, and everyone fled except Jan and Charlie, who would stay for herbal tea with Amy.
It was nearly five o'clock by the time they left the Kingsley's house, but Jan and Charlie decided to go ahead and move their things from Dennis's cabin, to set up camp in the place called simply "the clearing." Amy had suggested the former homesite that had been cleared for building, and then abandoned when the would-be pioneer moved back to the city. Both Charlie and Jan said they weren't afraid of any bears. Dennis was due back in a couple of days anyway, and Jan wanted a change from the smell of kerosene. Besides, it was a new era for them. They wanted to try out their possible future homesite.
They set up their cookstove and began cooking noodles. A more appropriate rock firepit could come another day, when they had more time.
"What did you think of the meeting?" Charlie asked Jan.
She paused, reflecting, her lips tightening. "It's not exactly what I expected."
"Oh? How do you mean?"
"Well, I sort of thought it would be like one big happy family. Instead it seemed like my family when I was growing up. Constant bickering over every little thing. My father presiding over the whole affair, pretending to be neutral but always getting his way in the end."
"I thought Robert did an excellent job of facilitating."
Jan didn't respond to Charlie's comment.
"I felt some resentment," she went on, "from Ellis and Ken, and Harold, too, before he left. I don't know if it's personal, or what. This issue of the number of homesites . . ."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. It's hard to tell, I guess, until we get to know them better. But still, they let us go ahead with our trial period. I think it was just the principle, this issue that was unresolved in their new charter."
"I wonder why it was unresolved."
"Maybe they just couldn't agree on a number. Oh, shit, the noodles - " Boiling foam spilled over the top of the pot onto the sputtering burner and put out the flame.
Jan let Charlie deal with cleaning up the mess while she took some of the hot water in a bowl and began stirring in bean flakes. They had to share the cooking chores as part of their agreement toward equality of gender roles.
Charlie expressed the opinion that the Co-op may have been better off before their new charter, when at least they had the benefit of a coherent single vision (Robert Kingsley's) to work with.
"I got the impression from Amy that it was just as much her vision, too. Everyone always says it was Robert. Robert this and Robert that. Women have ideas, too, you know."
"Oh, God. I didn't say they didn't."
"Do you think of God as male?"
"Of course not. I think of him as a principle."
"See? You said 'him.' That's what I mean. You always - "
"Do you want to hear what I think God is?"
"Oh, all right." She gazed into the noodle foam.
"It has to do with the flow of time, and a person's ability to make the best of his, or her, place in it."
"Very good. You're starting to be aware of your use of gender. But I still don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about."
"Okay, in concrete terms, I'd say I feel satisfied we're on the right path, so far: following our dreams. That's getting closer to God, in my opinion."
Jan muttered something.
"Don't you think so?"
She sighed in exasperation. "That's concrete?"
Charlie too was losing patience. "Look. I'm talking about what we're doing here. Do you feel good about it, being here, doing this trial period with me?"
"We'll see how it goes, I guess."
Charlie's mouth tightened shut. At times like this, he wondered why they had ever bothered to get married. They simply could not communicate on the level of ideas. And he often got the feeling she was suffering his company, instead of enjoying it. Maybe this "path" they were following was not so clear after all.
He changed the topic: "Do you think we should plant a little garden while we're here?"
Jan looked up, her face a little brighter. "Maybe so," she said. "That's sort of why we're here. This clearing gets lots of sun. . . ."
Harold lived in a tiny, unfinished cabin sided with slab lumber on three sides, tarpaper on the other. The interior was crammed with papers and books on every surface. When Charlie and Jan came in, one late afternoon a few days after the meeting, they found Harold sitting at a low bench that appeared to serve as a desk, writing. The cabin was filled with the smoke of strong French tobacco.
"Hi. Sit down," he said in an abrupt, offhand manner.
There was no where to sit except on the rumpled bed.
"Don't mind the mess," he said. "Coffee?"
"No thanks," Charlie and Jan both said.
"So, I guess we need to get acquainted." Harold finally lay down his pencil and turned his chair a fraction to face more toward his visitors.
No one said anything for a while. Charlie and Jan looked around at the walls cluttered with clippings and photocopies, at the floor with its ragged rug and dirty socks.
"So I guess it's a go with your trial period, eh?"
"Yes," Charlie said. "Were there any concerns you had about it? You were gone from the meeting by the time we got around to talking about it."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. No, nothing in particular. I have nothing against you guys. It's the wider issue, the unresolved business about the charter we revised a couple of years ago. We still don't have a clear long-term policy for membership on this piece of land. Do we want to keep it small? Do we want to expand the number of homesites to accommodate the large numbers of homeless people we can expect to see coming from the cities in the near future when the monster's shit hits the monster's fan, or what?"
"The monster?" Jan asked.
"You look so sweet and innocent," Harold said to her. "Maybe it's just those rosy cheeks, those cute blond braids. You look like Heidi."
Jan's rosy cheeks turned beet-red. She didn't know how to respond. She looked to Charlie - to defend her? Harold was just being honest. He saw in Jan's looks what attracted Charlie to her. Her mild features and clear, downy skin appealed to Charlie's own, perhaps naive, sense of innocent hope and idealism. Her personality was another matter which Charlie only discovered gradually. He knew that she wouldn't flash her fighting teeth in this situation, at a near-stranger, despite his boldness.
"The state that gobbles little people like us for breakfast every morning, and spits them out at night into the gutter. You know."
"Yeah," Charlie said. "Anyway, that issue about homesites was discussed at the meeting, and a commitment was made to iron it out during this trial period so it'll be settled before the next one."
Harold fished out a cigarette from a battered pack on his desk and lit it, spewing smoke into the little room. "Sure," he said. "Just like the last one."
Jan asked quickly, "What happened then?" It seemed to Charlie that she was eager to put the conversation on an even keel again. Or had she been flattered by Harold's observation of her? It was impossible to fathom her sometimes.
Harold ignored her and spoke directly to Charlie, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees for emphasis. "Same fucking thing, you know? Word for word; I got the minutes right here."
"Whose was the last trial period?" Jan asked.
Harold looked at her cooly. "Nobody here. A couple from the States. Somebody didn't like their accent. Somebody else didn't like the way they dressed, said their lifestyle wouldn't fit, or it would corrupt us or something. And I was worried about taking everybody from everywhere, no questions asked, until we got to be a little ghetto here in the woods. We'd get together in these huge work parties, like, and cut down all the trees, and then invite the police to keep us safe from each other; you know, a nice big party."
Charlie sat reflecting on how he and Jan stacked up against the last "prospective new members." He wondered if that couple, too, had enjoyed the first celebratory hug, had felt the warmth at the end of the rainbow.
"You guys hungry?" Harold said. "I was just thinking about breakfast."
The slanting rays of the late afternoon sun shone on swirling smoke and dust-motes. There was no kitchen, no sign of any food in the cabin.
Charlie stood up. "I think we'll go cook up some supper at our camp, thanks. It was good to get to talk with you a bit."
"Not at all."
Jan said belatedly, "You're welcome to come have supper with us."
Harold gave her a searching look, then gazed at the papers on his desk. "No, actually, I need to get back to this article I'm working on. Thanks."
The visitors left - Charlie, for one, grateful for a chore accomplished. He guessed that Harold held nothing personal against them, and that the larger issue of membership would take care of itself, sooner or later.
The gardens grew: Charlie's and Jan's included. They enjoyed the periodic harvest of peas, carrots, lettuce, young onions. The trial period passed without a hitch, and in September they were accepted as resident members of New Roots Co-op. They in turn accepted the membership and said they hoped to stay on somehow, with plans to build a house in the clearing.
The teaching job at the Kingsley's school, however, failed to materialize. Enrollment was down, and the Kingsleys between them would be able to handle the teaching load.
Jan took the news hard. "I might have to find work in town," she said.
"And me?" Charlie wanted wanted to know why she'd spoken only of her own plans.
"It's up to you to find work, too, I imagine."
"Yeah, I guess so. I don't know about town, though. Do you mean Galena?"
"There, or Wentworth. I kind of doubt there'd be much in Galena."
Charlie's heart sank. He didn't relish living in town, having just established a foothold on the land.
In mid-September Jan went to a feminist gathering on a farm near Wentworth. She came back reinforced in her dislike for certain habits of speech of Charlie's, as well as a number of his other "male" characteristics. One in particular was his "abstract optimism" about their chances to make a decent living in that economically depressed area of the world.
Charlie felt something would work out for both of them - or at least one, who could temporarily support the other. Jan found that prospect distasteful. Charlie dismissed her fears and glibly announced the results of an intense planning session while she was gone: a four-year schedule for completing a house of their own.
"Look Charlie, I don't think you know what you're talking about. Have you ever built anything bigger than a kitchen cutting board? And where are we going to live in the meantime - in a stupid tipi? Sit around the campfire and smoke dope all winter, pretending we're not cold? Not me. I'd rather live in an apartment in Wentworth."
"Wentworth again. You seem to be attracted to that idea. Do you mean you'd like to live there alone, or am I part of this plan of yours?"
Jan looked at him coldly. She had changed. "I have a couple of friends there, women I met at the gathering."
"Yeah, I've noticed, ever since you got back, you've been talking like a . . . a feminist."
"What were you going to say?"
"I - I don't know. I was looking for the right word."
"Ah-huh. Lesbian, maybe?"
"Oh, is that it? Tell me, what did you learn there?"
"Men wouldn't understand."
"Oh, I'm 'men,' now, am I? Your husband . . ."
"You know I hate that word. I wish you wouldn't use it. It reveals a possessive, chauvinist attitude. It's - "
"Okay, let's forget it."
"Right. The typical male response. And you think you're somehow different. Well, you're not."
There was nothing Charlie could say when she got in this mood.
"What are you feeling right now?"
"Me?" What was she getting at now?
"Yes. What are you feeling?"
"I'm feeling like you're trying to badger me."
"That's not a feeling."
"What do you mean, that's not a feeling? You asked me what I'm feeling, and I told you: I'm feeling like you - "
"No. You don't feel that, you're simply accusing me of something." She wore a proud, mocking smile.
"Good grief. All right. But that's what I'm feeling, that you are doing that."
"See, you don't even know what a real feeling is."
"Jesus, then, what's a real feeling? A feeling a woman has. You're just trying to prove your little theory that men have no feelings - by definition. That's not proof; it's just a tautology."
"There you go with that abstract philosophical crap again."
"It's not abstract, it's logical."
"Ah, logic, the familiar den of the male animal."
Charlie shook his head. This was no den, it was a prison of no escape.
"So tell me, oh wise earth-mother-goddess, what is a real feeling, as you understand it?"
"Oh, like, 'I'm angry. I'm feeling oppressed right now. I'm frustrated by your inability - '"
"But now you're just blaming me. You're doing the same thing you're accusing me of doing."
"No - I expressed a real feeling - frustration. You expressed an opinion, from your head."
"And your feeling came from your - let me guess - your womb, perhaps, or some other exclusively feminine - "
"Fuckhead!" she screamed at him. Then she whirled and stalked away in the direction of Sybil's.
