Children of Mother Earth
The trail ended in a huge clearing. The first thing I saw was the old school bus. It was difficult to miss, with a psychedelic paint job standing out against the green mountain forest. The words Love Mobile were written in bubble letters on the hood. I noticed the large scratches down the sides and the huge muffler hanging underneath. It had been a rough ride down the narrow trail. The bus suddenly lurched to the side as a large, naked man stepped from it. He squinted at the bright sunshine, scratched his thick beard, and took a leak on the front tire. Turning back to the door, he finally noticed me. Smiling, he waved me over.
“Joey! You made it, man,” he bellowed.
He swallowed me into a giant hug, lifting me off the ground. I’d never been hugged by a naked, hairy fat guy before and I can’t say that I enjoyed it. Still, I was pleased to see him.
“Hi, Bear. Of course I made it.”
“What about the job?”
“Quit this morning,” I told him. “No more computer, no more cell phone.”
Bear peered down at me through happy, bloodshot eyes. “Far out, man. How about your old lady and your little guy?”
“They won’t be coming.”
When I first mentioned the idea of leaving everything behind and joining a commune, Patti laughed. I explained that I was sick of living in a world of computers and cell phones. It was Big Brother, just like Orwell predicted, only worse. Every purchase, every phone call, every e-mail is monitored by the government, I told her. You can’t fart in your own backyard anymore without the world knowing. The commune was into real communication, peace and love. I wanted to give up everything that was dragging us down and go live with them. Little Jack could grow up playing outside, eating food we’d grown ourselves instead of sitting inside staring at a screen and getting fat on preservatives.
Jill disagreed, to put it nicely. She truly believed I was joking. When she realized I was serious, anger replaced laughter. Our lives were fine, she said. Cell phones and computers allowed us to work and afford nice things. We owned a big house and nice cars, the American Dream. No way was she going to allow Jack to be brought up in the woods by a bunch of hippie freaks. You’re thirty years old, Joe, start acting like it. And on and on it went. I’m sure she never expected me to actually leave.
Bear climbed back into the bus, his massive, furry shoulders nearly as wide as the doorway. He re-appeared a moment later, wearing a pair of denim shorts partially concealed by belly and hip fat. Throwing his arm around my shoulders, he led me around the bus. “Leo’s gonna be happy to see you, man. Everybody will be,” he said.
I heard women laughing and splashing water as Bear led me toward the cabins. It was a former YMCA camp, abandoned twenty years ago. There were six buildings in all, including an outhouse, all in disrepair. Fifty yards beyond the cabins was a small lake, its surface dancing happily in the warm sunshine. In the water were five or six women, all naked.
Leo was in the largest cabin. It was made of stone – The Stoned House – and inside was cave-like, dim with cool, damp air. When my eyes adjusted I saw Leo lying on a couch; I think we interrupted his nap. Standing, he greeted me enthusiastically, hugging me, thanking me for the camp. He was tall, even taller than Bear, but much thinner, with a flat sheet of silver hair hanging nearly to his waist. He resembled a wizard, and several members of the commune believed he had magical powers. That perception probably benefited from the group’s heavy drug use, but there is no doubt that Leo was remarkably intelligent, perceptive, and charismatic. We’d only met once before and he’d convinced me to leave my job and family to live in the wilderness.
I was a real estate agent, a very good one, when I met Bear. I entered a coffee shop full of white-collar conservatives and took the only empty seat. Next to me sat a wild Grizzly Adams in a Hendrix t-shirt, looking big as a mountain but lost as a little boy. We began talking and it turned out he was supposed to be meeting friends, only he was in the wrong coffee shop. I set him straight and when he stood to leave I handed him my card. Everyone is a potential client, I’d been taught.
I was surprised by his call a week later. He explained that he and his friends were looking for a campground or a large piece of property to rent. I had just the place, a former YMCA camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, about eighty miles from my office in Portsmouth. We arranged to meet there a couple of days later. When I arrived the psychedelic bus, with the entire group aboard, greeted me at the trailhead. Bear, Leo and his wife Dandelion came out to greet me. They were quite a trio – Bear, in jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt the size of a bed sheet, and Leo and Dandelion, wearing robes and peace beads.
It was late April, cool, with small patches of snow still on the ground, but peaceful warmth radiated from Leo. While walking the property he told me about his commune, The Children Of Mother Nature. They disapproved of modern technology and chose to live without it. They used electricity, of course, and were pleased to see power lines running to the camp. But they felt that cell phones, computers, and social networking sites were ruining society. Leo believed in peace and love; technology provided more weapons and less communication. In a couple of hours the man completely changed my life perspective. To top it off, Leo loved the property and signed a six month lease on the spot. He invited me to camp overnight with the group. I accepted.
And now, barely a month later, I was living among them. Between twenty and thirty people lived at the camp, some crashing for a few days, others staying long-term. Ages varied, from tan, smiling toddlers to an eighty-year-old geriatric named Conrad who everybody called Shaky. Shaky was a kind, gentle soul who smoked a lot of weed and shook like he had a jackhammer up his ass. I felt bad for him, at first, until I realized he was sleeping with most of the women in the commune. I heard that some slept with him to find out if the shaking added any sexual satisfaction. I never found out if it did or didn’t, but they kept going back.
I spent the first few weeks getting to know the place, the people, and freeing my mind from what Leo called society’s trappings. I began smoking a lot of pot, which I hadn’t done since I was a teenager. Bear grew it – all natural, with no harmful chemicals, just as God intended us to smoke it, he said. Many a day I sat atop a mountain, smoking Bear Grass, watching soft clouds stroll across mountaintops. I also engaged in plenty of free love, a vaginal buffet. Of course, nothing is really free and I came down with a raging case of chlamydia. Even so, between all the sex and weed I really had no time to consider cell phones or computers. My mind and my body were free. This, I knew, was life as it should be lived.
Content as I was, I missed my son. Warm evenings sleeping outside, gazing at the stars, I imagined little Jack curled tight against me. I missed Patti, too. We’d had our differences but she was the only woman I’d ever loved. Strangely, the more sex I had with other women, the more I missed her. My sadness grew deeper as summer passed, until one evening I took the motorcycle – along with the bus we had an old Enduro motorcycle and a pickup truck – to town, using a payphone to call Patti and Jack.
“Hi, Patti, it’s me. How are you and Jack doing?” I asked.
“How are we doing? Well, my husband has run off to be a hippie and the bills are piling up. My son cries every night because his father has left him. How do you think we’re doing?”
“Now Patti, I left you plenty of money to pay the bills,” I said. But the image of Jack crying for me hurt deeply. I felt like an ass. I was an ass.
She took a deep breath. “Joe, we miss you. Please get this out of your system and come home.”
“Can I speak to Jack?” I asked.
“He’s not here. I’ll tell him you called, unless you want to come home and tell him yourself,” Patti said.
I gave Patti a mailing address and the phone number of a local who visited the commune every week, in case she needed to get in touch with me. I said a quick goodbye and hung up. I sat on the motorcycle for a few minutes, not moving. Hearing my wife’s voice had forced open a flood dam of memories. I smelled Patti’s hair, heard Jack’s squealing laughter. How could I have left them? What kind of man abandons his family to get high and screw? It was heavy stuff, too heavy to think about. I went back to the camp, smoked, and got it on with Leo and Dandelion’s nineteen year old daughter, Lily.
Eventually fall came, and with it cooler weather. It was only September but the evening temperatures dropped below freezing, and before long snow would begin piling up. There was a small electric heater in Leo’s cabin but no heat elsewhere. Leo decided that the Children Of Mother Nature would leave for the warm Arizona sunshine in a couple days. Lily and I would tow the motorcycle with the pickup, with the rest piling into the bus.
But I wasn’t going to Arizona. I’d decided to return home to Patti and Jack. I found myself missing them more than ever. I loved everyone in the commune, I loved the lifestyle, but I loved my family more. My son needed me, and I needed him. I’d already given up pot and sex in anticipation of my return. Then Lily told me she was pregnant with my child, forcing the realization that I should have given up sex a little sooner.
Still, there was no temptation to stay. Sexually the group resembled caged animals in heat, and surely Lily had slept with several others. It was very possible that I wasn’t the father. Whether I stayed or not, the entire commune would love and care for the baby. I liked Lily – she was young, cute, energetic – but I didn’t love her. It was time for me to tell Leo I was leaving.
The day was cold and windy. I found him in his cabin, sitting next to the electric heater, staring out the window overlooking the choppy lake. He didn’t look over when I entered, but he’d known I was coming. Leo always knew these things.
“Hi Leo, can we talk for a minute?”
“Of course,” he said softly.
“This is difficult for me,” I said, and it was. I was nervous as a kid standing before the principal. “I wanted to let you know that I won’t be going to Arizona. I’ve decided to return to my wife and son. I’ve enjoyed my time with you, all of you, but I miss my family. I just wanted to thank you for allowing me to become part of your family.”
He finally turned to face me. He looked strange. His normally warm eyes were cold as the blustery fall air. “What about Lily’s baby?”
“Yes, well, you know how it is around here. No matter who the father is, the baby will be loved by all of you.”
“Lily says it is your baby, which makes you the father of my grandchild. We are your family now.”
“What is that supposed to mean? I told you I’m leaving. Please don’t make this difficult, Leo.” I was getting annoyed.
Leo reached under his chair, pulling out a wooden box. He walked slowly across the dim room and set the box on a table. Gesturing me over, he opened the box. I was certain he was showing me a family crest or heirloom. I wasn’t interested, but I looked out of respect. The first thing I saw was a handgun. It was black and looked very dangerous, much like Leo’s face at the moment. He then pulled a satellite phone from the box, causing me to step back in shock. Leo fooled around with it for a minute, then showed me the screen. On it was a picture of my house. Smiling darkly, he held the gun up next to the phone, then gently placed both back inside the box.
“Amazing little gadgets, satellite phones,” Leo said. “Truly amazing. I can get reception anywhere in the world, I‘m told.”
“I thought you were against technology! And a gun? Does anyone else know about this?”
“Do you have any idea how much love it takes to shoot someone, Joe? To free them from life? There can be no remorse if it is done with love.”
“Are you going after my family? Are you going to kill my son?” I asked. Warm piss ran down the inside of my legs.
“I told you, we are your family now. As long as you remember that, there is no reason to go after anyone.”
“Who are you? Does Lily know about this?”
“Some might know, and some might not. All families have secrets, Joe. Just know that everything is done with love,” Leo said. Smiling serenely, he closed the box.
He returned to his chair, gazing calmly out the window at the water beyond. I watched him for a moment before walking out. I changed my pants, smoked some weed, and began helping my family pack for Arizona.
Gary Sprague lives in Maine with his wife and two sons. He has owned both a plumbing business and a vinyl record store. One paid well, the other he enjoyed. Before children his hobbies were hiking and travel. His new hobbies are watching Curious George, playing hide and seek, and finding time to sleep. He can be contacted at garysprague2000@yahoo.com.
