Chapter 10
We arrived in Canoga Park around one in the afternoon. We must have been quite a shock to the squares as we drove through the streets in the psychedelic microbus, all of us in our colorful tribe clothes, shouting "Love!" and "Peace!" as we passed anyone.
The parking lots and side streets near McBride Park in Canoga Park were chock full. It looked like there were thousands of people at the love-in already. Zeke had to park half a mile away next to a Hancock filling station. There were a lot of uniformed cops around.
We set up close to the platform near home plate where a so-so rock group was blasting away. They were the February Stencils. Blue Honey was scheduled next.
We attracted some attention when we arrived and Zeke stuck the tribe poles in the ground and unfurled our banners and flags. We set out the jewelry, bracelets and things for sale, laid out the oranges and cookies and dates we had brought to give away, and we sat in a circle facing outward, accepting life and the wandering people who came our way.
It was a hot day. Somewhere in the nineties.
The baseball field was sprinkled with small groups and clusters of families having a picnic, tribes, friends ... and a constant arriving, a movement of hundreds of others. There was a thickening of the crowd near the band platform. There were a couple of uniformed cops standing close by, but they were sort of digging the scene. They smiled, too.
Sparrow was eye-catching in a wild pink and blue and white caftan that swished the ground when she walked. Her loose, bouncy breasts underneath and her beautiful smile made people look and smile in return.
Owl wore his same cut-off Levi's and old paint-dappled green cardigan sweater.
Zeke had on his button-decorated vest, Rill wore her sweatshirt, and belled ankle bracelets, jeans. Robin wore her hand-painted cotton shift. Blackbird wore his colorful serape and thumped-tap-tapped on his bongos.
I wore my flower-painted white sweater and some brocaded black toreador pants that had been Too Much for San Marino and mother's delicate sensibilities. I wasn't even self-conscious about not wearing a bra under the sweater, in the first place because I was getting used to it and dug the feeling of freedom, and secondly because hundreds of other chicks at the love-in were swinging free, too.
I had helped carry stacked trays of handmade rings and necklaces, so I had had to leave my guitar behind in the bus. Everyone else had been loaded, too.
I got the keys from Zeke and started back. Owl had his sketch pad open and was oblivious of me as he drew an oriental baby who was sitting, laughing, next to his mother a few feet away from us.
I cut across the field on the way to the bus. I didn't know anyone was following me till I heard bare feet behind me on the sidewalk a block from the bus. I looked around and it was Blackbird. His hair was frizzier and fuzzier than ever. It looked like a growth of black cotton candy on his head.
He said, "Hey, Lark." He caught up to me with long strides.
"You forget something?"
"Could say, could say." He laughed and tapped his bongos.
We reached the tribe's bus and I unlocked the right front door and climbed in. My guitar was in the back. The air inside the Volks was already stifling.
Blackbird got in after me and slammed the door shut. He locked it. The interior of the bus was hot and private because all the windows had been locked and the drapes had been pulled closed when we left earlier. That was because there were valuable things still inside, on the seats, on the floor, and Zeke thought it wise to cut off the view from curious and maybe thievey people. Zeke was realistic.
But. now I was alone in the bus with Blackbird and I could almost smell what he wanted. I got my guitar and turned. He had me cut off. He had put aside his bongos. He said, "Pretty hot in here."
"Then let's get out." I tried to get past him. He put his hands on the flowers on my sweater on my breasts. I jerked away. "Blackbird-"
"We got a minute. Let's have some fun." He put one hand under my sweater and fondled me with a sweaty hand. Pinpoints of sweat were forming on my skin, too, from the oppressive heat inside the bus. I felt my nipples responding automatically.
I tried to pull away and dislodge his hand. "I don't want to. Not now!"
"Why not? We got time. Nobody gonna come. Nobody can get in." He tried to kiss me.
I avoided his big lips. "Blackbird!"
He got mad. He shoved me away and I fell backward into a seat. I almost broke my guitar. He growled, "How come? Jus' how come? If I was Owl you'd have time! You'd have your pants off and your cunt open so fast You know you s'posed to be tribe! You s'posed to be mine, too! So how come when I want you, you too busy or somethin'? "
"Maybe I wouldn't be 'too busy' if you behaved halfway decent! I just don't like you, and it isn't because you're black. It's because you act like-"
"It is! You think you too good to fuck a black man!"
"I don't either! I don't make it with races! I do it with individuals! I wouldn't matter if you were green, or the King of England I still wouldn't do anything with you if I didn't like you and respect you as a person."
"Oh, don't give me that shit, girl! That's shit! You racist and you makin' up all these imagine arguments but you know you tryin' to hand me shit!"
"Think what you want. I don't care! I'm not going to do anything with you now and I'm not going to stay in this oven and argue with you!" I glared at him, angry myself, and waited for him to let me by.
He unzipped his jeans and pull out his penis. It was hard and the dark skin was peeled back from the purple glans. "Come on, Lark."
"No, I said!"
"Don' be that way. It won't take long. Let me fuck you for jus' five minutes."
"No!"
"Then you blow me! You suck me!" It was a command.
The thought made me ill. He could be diseased again. He wasn't clean. I could see little white smears of white stuff below the glans.
"Let me out!"
"You got to do it! You got to be tribe!" He advanced on me and crowded me further back into the seat. He was hunched over by the low roof.
I drew my legs up and prepared to kick him if I had to. "Stop it! You're the one who's not being tribe! You're supposed to ask, and if the tribe girl is agreeable, fine, but if she isn't, you're not supposed to force her!"
He saw my feet ready to lash out and I guess he saw in my eyes I'd do it. He knew it would be too much of a struggle and might lead to all kinds of trouble if he really tried to rape me.
Blackbird backed off. "I'll get you thrown out!"
"Maybe." I waited for him to retreat more. He had to make threats to save his pride and ego.
Finally, after another minute of bluster and grumbling and pleading, he stuffed his penis back into his pants and climbed out of the bus. He took off right away, with his bongos.
I was more angry than scared. I got out with my guitar, locked the Volks and started back to the park.
When I rejoined the tribe Blackbird wasn't with them. I settled down during a period when there was a change of rock groups on the band platform. It took them twenty minutes to a half-hour sometimes to change amps, speaker systems, mikes, to make adjustments, test their equipment, tune up...
I sat cross-legged and started singing and playing. I sang a new song I composed a few days before. It goes like this:
"Bird tribe ... bird tribe ... is love in a tiny place.
Bird tribe ... bird tribe ... where love is a way of life.
We have a scene that isn't mean, that makes it with the truth.
We have a scene that isn't mean, that makes it with the truth."
I sang three stanzas, all I had written, then started all over again. All the kids around were listening, crowding in close, digging the song, the message, and digging our circle and the love we were putting out.
Robin and Sparrow and Rill were smiling and handing out cookies and fruit.
A lot of them asked questions about us when I finished singing. Some bought Robin's handcrafted things. They were, a lot of them, square valley kids with a strong yearning for Something, a new society, a way out of the awful life they saw all around them. They knew it was all based on lies and greed and they knew they were probably trapped. So they envied us and wanted to be part of us, even if the only way to do that was to buy a symbol of our way from Robin or Zeke.
In five minutes after I sang I had sold two bracelets for fifteen dollars. Those kids had money and spent it easily, sort of casually, and contemptuously.
I didn't tell Zeke or anyone what had happened in the bus.
A super groovy group started wailing from the platform nearby. Sparrow started getting the beat. She grinned and stood up. She started to dance. We widened the circle for her.
The TV crews nearby got interested and started filming. A lot of snapshots were taken.
Sparrow had a jerky-fluid way of moving that was beautiful. Her hands and arms and feet and knees jerked and waved, but her body flowed ... it was sinuous and smooth moving. I don't know how she did it. It was sexy, too, with her nakedness underneath the thin, colorful caftan her big breasts bobbling and jiggling, and the material tightening momentarily here and there on her body to show her nipples and the smooth line of her thigh, or the firm roundness of her buttocks.
Then Rill got up, too, and danced her way, with her ankle bells tinkling, her long dark-red hair rippling and shifting and swaying in time with the free movement of her breasts, too, under her sweatshirt. Her nipples were very prominent. The slipping of the sweatshirt material over her nipples seemed to drive her faster and faster.
A few girls and boys outside our circle started to dance, too, but Rill and Sparrow were the stars. Cameras whirred and flashbulbs went off all around.
The rock group was really blasting, really freaking out as they got involved with the crowd and our dancers and their own thing.
Rill started moaning as she gasped as she danced. I think she was in a kind of self-hypnotic trance, really with it! She suddenly pulled her sweatshirt up and off in one quick, graceful motion, and there she was: white skin, beautiful breasts naked to the sun and sky and the music.
The kids around us went "Ohhh..." appreciatively, and clapped in approval. There were a few sniggers and "Take it off's" but mostly the crowd understood and were with Rill in her purity and beauty. The camera bugs went crazy.
Even the cops grooved and didn't interfere, until a girl apart from us who was also dancing decided to strip all the way. She was skinny and kind of frantic to compete, I think. She pulled open her shirt, then dropped her miniskirt. She got her pink panties off and was jumping around, flushed and daring, showing her thin brown muff, but two cops shouldered forward and broke it all up. They made the group stop playing and made Rill put her sweatshirt back on. She would have anyway, once the beat stopped. The other girl was hustled away with a coat around her. The kids booed and yelled at the cops. But they were under the gun because of the TV and press cameras. They had to "uphold the public morality."
Things settled down soon after, though, and we found ourselves talking with all kinds of people, a lot of them older, in their thirties and forties, who seemed genuinely interested in us and the way we lived. They bought things sometimes, sometimes accepted a love offering, and sometimes gave us things. It was beautiful, simply beautiful.
Once, though, a young man who looked hip to me came close and asked if I was holding. I said no and he asked if I knew anyone who was. He was very anxious to make a buy. He wanted to "score some grass." He asked for Blackbird.
I said I was sorry, I couldn't help him, and he eventually went away after trying Owl and Zeke. When he had gone Zeke leaned close to me and said, "That was a narc."
"He was? How could you tell?"
"Just a feeling. And he was too anxious."
Owl asked Zeke, "Is Blackbird dealing?"
"I think so. It must stop!"
About an hour later, as we were eating lunch, a young couple walked over to us. The boy carried an old leather suitcase, but it was in good condition. The leather was supple and clean. He wore a thin leather shirt dyed deep green, cut off levis like Owl, only his were off-white, and beautiful handmade moccasins. His hair was long, like Owl's but dark brown, and he had a flowing handlebar mustache instead of a goatee like Owl. His name was Paul and he had somber brown eyes I liked and trusted immediately. He was about twenty-five.
The girl was lovely. She was Cheryl. Her hair was as long as mine, past her shoulders, and a natural white blonde. She was slim, not scrawny, and wore a simple minidress of dark-green jersey that clung to her body and showed her lithe curves. She had very little bust and didn't wear a padded bra to fill herself out. She wore matching dark green boots that had a quality, handmade look about them. She had clear blue-green eyes and seemed about my age.
Paul knelt before Zeke, who was sitting beside me, and he said, "We've heard about the bird tribe. We'd like to join you."
Cheryl knelt beside Paul, and she kept silent, content to let him speak for them both. I noticed that she wore a simple gold wedding ring, and that he did, too.
Zeke said, "We have many who wish to join us, but we have no room. I don't want the tribe to be too large."
Paul nodded. "Could you recommend a tribe to us? We're living in our car now and it isn't good for more than a week at a time. We're both craftsmen. I work in leather.
...He opened the suitcase and we saw samples of finely made sandals, shoes, moccasins, boots, belts, and a beautiful girl's chamois vest dyed red that I fell in love with.
Zeke studied the articles as Paul continued, ". . . and Cheryl designs and makes clothes. She made the dress she's wearing, and I made her boots. My shirt is hers, too."
Zeke said, smiling, "Skills like yours ... are too good to pass by. We'll make room for you. We may have to move to a bigger house, but I want you and your wife for the tribe . . if you want us."
"I'm sure...."
"No, listen. We are a tribe! Not simply couples and singles living together on a communal basis. We're a unit." He went on to describe our life together. He introduced us. We all smiled and talked. They impressed us all as a sweet, fine couple, and we all wanted them in with us.
We exchanged information. They had been married a year before in Detroit and came west. There had been too much interference in their lives from their parents who had opposed their marriage and wanted Paul to be a lawyer in spite of his dislike for it, and his love for handicrafts, especially leatherwork; and Cheryl's folks had almost gone to court to keep her from marrying a "dirty commie hippie."
We shared our food with Paul and Cheryl. Then Zeke frowned and looked around at the people and asked, "Anyone seen Blackbird since we arrived?"
I said truthfully, "He followed me to the bus when I went to get my guitar, but that was the last I saw of him."
"What did he want there?"
I said simply, "Me."
Owl looked at me. I shook my head slightly. Zeke caught the exchange but said nothing. He said to Paul, "If you have things to sell why don't you set up a display here with us?"
Paul said, "I'd like that." He left his suitcase with us while he and Cheryl went to get things from their car. Sparrow went with them to help.
Zeke turned to me. "What happened at the bus?"
I told him exactly what had happened. I didn't feel I was "telling on" Blackbird or anything like that. I simply refused to lie.
Zeke nodded. Owl said, "He shouldn't be in the tribe if he's going to act that way."
Zeke nodded. "I agree. I'm going to go look for him. We have to talk." He got up and walked into the crowd.
A few minutes later another rock band started up and Rill got up to dance. But then a commotion started near the end of the right field foul line of the field and we stood up to see what was going on. We could hear powerful cycle engines over there vrooming up and down.
I couldn't see anything except a kind of rippling in the crowd there and a flow of color through tiny gaps. Then we heard the hooting of a police car and saw one approach through the trees. Then another came rushing over. We could see the red lights flashing on their roofs. After that, things settled down over there.
Sparrow and Paul and Cheryl came back from that direction a few minutes later and said the police had arrested two members of the Devil's Hands for running their big hogs in the park. Sparrow also said, "I heard one cat say they's twenty or thirty narcs here and they busted at leas' ten hippies so far for possession."
Paul made a face. "Why can't they leave us alone?" He laid a shoe rack on the grass and set up a display of sandals. Cheryl quietly unzipped a plastic clothes carrier and spread some colorful minidresses on white tissue paper. She was quiet and soft-spoken. Withdrawn, and self-contained, but warm, too. I had a feeling she would open up more once she got to know us better.
Blackbird approached our circle and appeared out of breath. He squatted down in a hurry and ducked out of his colorful serape. "Hey, Rill, trade with me. I need somethin' square. This too visible."
"Why?"
"I need your sweatshirt! Ain' got time to argue!" He looked over his shoulder. He shoved his bongos into one of the cardboard boxes we had used to carry food in. "Come on!" He was almost frantic. "The narcs are after me!"
Rill's face set. "Blackbird, you were warned...."
"Ohh..." he wailed and leaped away. As he did he snatched up a beautiful man's shirt, made of blue wide-wale corduroy, that Cheryl had just laid on tissue on the ground, and ran all-out toward the street.
A young man in duck pants, sneakers and a plaid shirt sprinted toward us. Past us, then he stopped because Blackbird was out of sight. The men walked back to us. "What's that colored boy's name?"
None of us said a word.
"You know him. That's his watcha-callit there! What's his name; Where did he go?" Sparrow said, "Who you?"
He gritted his teeth and pulled a flat wallet from his back pocket. He flipped it open and showed a badge. "Police officer." He glared at us. "I asked who that colored boy was!"
"What you want him for?"
"Suspicion of possession of narcotics. Now do I get some information or do I arrest the whole lot of you?"
Paul asked quietly, "On what charge?"
The plainclothes cop centered his gaze on Paul. "If I shook you down there's no telling what I'd find, buddy. You with this group?"
"Yes."
The cop took in Paul's sandal display, his neat, high-quality clothes, Cheryl and her clothes. "Listen, I saw him grab one of your shirts here. That's aiding and abetting."
"He took it without permission."
I said, "That's right." Owl and the others nodded.
Another plainclothesman, young, trotted over. "You got anything on him?"
"Took a blue shirt and ran that way." The first cop pointed.
"What about these people?"
"Flower children! Let's go!" He started off toward the street. The other cop looked us over and followed.
Sparrow breathed deeply. "Hoooeee."
Owl said, "We could have been busted so easy...."
I asked, "How? We didn't do anything."
Sparrow said, "Don' matter. They think o' somethin'. So we have to hire a lawyer and spend all kinds of money we ain' got, and bail ourselves out and then they drop the charges fo' lack of evidence."
Paul nodded. "I've seen it happen in Detroit a lot. When they arrest you for a little thing they search everything looking for drugs. If they find anything you're up the creek."
I looked at Owl and wondered if he had any LSD cubes hidden in our room in the house. Zeke returned. "What happened?" We told him.
Zeke sat down and fingered the buttons on his vest thoughtfully. He rubbed his gray-stubbled face for a few seconds, then said, "That's it, then. Blackbird isn't tribe anymore. Everything he's done lately has been self-oriented completely. This is the final proof. He's endangered our tribe, he's running with people I don't like and he's spending all his time away from us now."
Sparrow nodded. "I go with that."
Robin hadn't said much. She had simply enjoyed the day, sold her jewelry, talked to people, and been serene and accepting. I think her presence saved us from arrest, though. I don't think the cops could face the prospect of the ribbing they'd have gotten if they'd arrested a crippled girl in a wheelchair. The Free Press would have roasted them, and the TV people would have filmed us. I think that's what really stopped them.
But, anyway, Robin said, "He's changed a lot. He's talking black nationalism all the time now. That's all right if he wants it, but it doesn't mix with the tribe way. He'll have to make a choice."
Zeke said, "He's made a choice. He was tribe but he's moved away from us emotionally and psychologically."
Owl said, "What do we do?"
Zeke said, "It was inevitable that there would eventually be some of us who would grow away from us or prove wrong for the tribe. The only thing to do with Blackbird is vote him out."
Robin said, "I don't like him anymore. We're so close in the tribe that it sets up a terrible strain if somebody changes and goes sour and isn't liked. The tribe can't work with someone like that in it. The love scene doesn't work."
Sparrow nodded. "For sure!"
Zeke waited for more comment. There was none. He said, "Hands against Blackbird." Rill, Robin, Sparrow and
Owl raised their hands. I couldn't vote. I wasn't an ankh-wearing member yet. Zeke said, "It's unanimous."
A different rock group started doing their thing on the platform then, and things settled down to a familiar routine.
Owl and I left the circle and went for a walk, hand in hand, through the crowd, among the small groups of hippies and pioneers and playing kids. I took some cookies and gave them out as we went, smiling, trying to wipe out the Blackbird incidents from my mind.
We got back in half an hour just in time for the worst thing of all!
Cheryl was selling a cute aqua mini-dress to a teenybopper it would have been a fifteen dollar sale when three vicious high school boys started running through the crowd squirting hippies with water pistols filled with red paint!
We didn't see them coming or realize what was going on until they were running past us, squirting us and our things.
It was awful! They spattered Robin and me and Sparrow! All of us! They pumped streams of red paint all over Cheryl and her beautiful dresses and things!
Zeke's white hair was dripping, as if he had been clubbed or shot.
Owl and Paul leaped up and chased after them but couldn't catch them.
The uniformed cops were no place in sight and of course the plainclothesmen in the crowd wouldn't reveal their identity.
Cheryl was weeping, clutching her ruined dresses to her red-spattered front. Sparrow and I tried to help, but it looked hopeless ... I really didn't think they could be cleaned well enough to make them saleable again. I had an idea how much time and work she had put into those dresses and things. I held her close and said, "We'll take them to a dry-cleaners right away, before the paint dries."
Zeke nodded. "Everybody pack up!
Rill and Sparrow started to gather things together. Robin hadn't been squirted, luckily, and her jewelry and things hadn't been touched.
A man nearby had seen what had happened and laughed.
Zeke withered the man with a look, then turned away to help Robin.
Paul and Owl came back. We talked and packed.
Zeke invited Paul and Cheryl home with us. They accepted. We walked out of the love-in. It was breaking up anyway.
We drove to a nearby dry cleaners and managed to save most of Cheryl's clothes, but it cost nearly five dollars.
We drove home with Paul and Cheryl following close in their old, heavily loaded Chevy.