Chapter 4
I knocked on the psychedelic front door of the tribe's house at seven forty-five the next morning. It was quiet. There was an early morning chill and the air was clean and pure. Smog hadn't built up in the atmosphere yet from a million cars.
I licked my lips and swallowed and felt icky in my guts. I tried the door. It was unlocked.
I stepped inside. The air in the entranceway had a funny smell, a sweaty, sour, food, smoky combination. I heard somebody snoring.
I put down my small red Samsonite suitcase and shut the door behind me. Part of me wanted to run back to the apartment house. But I walked quietly into the house and looked into the living room.
Two boys were sleeping on the sofas. Two girls were on the floor in cheap sleeping bags. The boy on the purple sofa was snoring. He didn't have any covering-just a heavy jacket. The other boy had an old, ratty, pink blanket wrapped around himself.
They were hippies who had come to the tribe's house for a place to crash.
I wanted to talk to Owl. I had to find out if he really wanted me, or if he had just been making noises the night before.
I picked up my suitcase and went up the narrow stairs to the second floor. Owl's door was just slightly ajar. I could see the bed. He was cuddled under the bedding with his knees drawn up close to his chest. His long blonde hair was awry, all over his face. He was so quiet! I could barely see him breathe.
I pushed the door open and it squeaked. He didn't stir. I went into his room and lugged my bag to the side of his bed. I wasn't barefoot and my shoes seemed to me to make a terrible thumping on the bare, paint-spattered wooden floor. But Owl kept on sleeping. I wondered if he was drugged. "Owl?"
His eyes opened. He stared at my light blue stretch pants, then looked at his old sweatshirt I was wearing, at my face. He smiled. "Hey ... Lark."
I nearly burst into happy tears. "Hi." I was awkward and hesitant. "I decided to join the tribe."
"Great. I dig that." He brushed his hair away from his face and reached out for my hand. He pulled me down to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He rolled onto his back. His arms and shoulders were uncovered. He didn't wear anything when he slept. He didn't let go of my hand. He said, smiling, "How come? What made you decide?"
I reached out with my other hand and played with his scraggly little goatee. "You ... and the tribe, and my mother last night ... and just ... things that have been building up for a long time."
He stared at me, sort of content and happy, and I looked back and wanted to kiss him. Then he asked, "You just walk out on 'em?"
"I just sneaked out. I left a letter, though. They were asleep."
He noticed my suitcase. He grinned. "Goddamn!" He squeezed my hand in his. "That's great." He pulled me closer until I had settled onto his chest. His hands slipped up under the sweatshirt onto my bare back. He discovered I had worn no bra. And we kissed.
His mouth wasn't sweet and his breath was a little bad, but I didn't care. I liked it in a way. He wasn't so terribly afraid of offending like David who globped on the aftershave, rolled on the Right Guard, and chewed breath mints.
Owl's kiss heated me up. His hands caressed my back, then his fingers edged under the waist of my stretch pants and pushed down till his hands were cupping my buttocks and rubbing me there.
I was meeting his tongue in my mouth, beginning to breathe hard, beginning to squirm a little. I could feel him getting a hard-on under the blanket and sheet.
I broke the kiss and whispered, "Should I close the door?"
He nodded.
As I got up from the bed we heard bare feet in the hall and suddenly Blackbird was in the room, stark naked, surprised at seeing me, then grinning. "We got us a early visitor." He was tall! Slim and lithe, and black! With his fuzzy, bushy hair and flat nose and wide, thick lips, he was frightening.
I was rattled. I felt myself blushing violently, not because he had caught me with Owl, but because I was seeing him naked ... and I couldn't keep my eyes from his genitals. His penis was as dark-skinned as the rest of him, but not as long as what I had expected, from stories, from whispered, giggly speculation among girls. "Niggers" were supposed to have big ones, bigger than white boys, and they were supposed to be "animalistic" and very virile, and so on. They raped a lot.
Blackbird just stood there in front of me and said, "Owl, got any cigarettes?" He saw my suitcase. "Hey, you plannin' on joinin' the tribe?"
I nodded. I tried desperately to be cool, to recover from my initial reaction. The shades were pulled and the light was dim in the room. I hoped he hadn't noticed my flush.
Owl said, "They're in my pants." He pointed toward his ragged, spattered Levi's on a chair.
Blackbird moved unselfconsciously to the chair and found a pack of Viceroys. He took two and used a book of matches on a table near a full ashtray to light up. He said, "You gonna have to talk to Zeke. He got the final word." Blackbird took a deep drag on the cigarette. "I'm all for it, though." He looked at me. "Be nice to have another chick around."
Owl said, "We'll talk to him later."
"See him now. He'n Rill 're awake. I was just in there askin' for a smoke."
Owl sat up and threw the covers aside. He had half an erection. He said to me, "Maybe we should. He'll be busy later. Some guys from the Peace and Freedom Party are coming over, and things pile up during the day." He reached for his pants.
I was scared. The sinking feeling was in my belly again. "What if he says no?"
Owl didn't answer. He stepped into the Levi's. Blackbird said, "Lots of hippies want to join us. But ol' Zeke is real choosy. Got to be a limit. Can't take everybody. No room."
That made me almost ill. I hadn't thought about being refused. I couldn't go back to mother and dad. Not now!
Owl took my hand and we left his room and went down the hall to the third room on the second floor. The second room's door was wide open. It was Blackbird's. I glanced in and saw huge poster-pictures of Stokeley Carmichael and Cassius Clay on the wall over his rumpled bed. A corner was littered with parts of a machine, and a table held something that looked like a carburetor from a car.
There was a small bathroom opposite his door-just a toilet and a washbowl-that Owl had obviously decorated. The inside walls were alive with purple vines and little, furry green animals with five legs. I only got a quick look then but I went back later.
Zeke's door was slightly ajar, as had been Owl's. I guessed it meant he was available. Owl called, "Hey, Zeke?" I was aware of Blackbird's nakedness behind me. Too close.
"Come in." Zeke sounded sleepy.
We entered the room. It was all books and papers and paintings. There was a big, old-fashioned rolltop desk by the window. It was littered with papers. The walls were hung with brackets and pine shelving loaded with books, more papers, boxes ... Above the rows of books were framed paintings. I recognized some by Owl.
Zeke and Rill were in their double bed. It was just a mattress and a set of box springs on a low steel frame. There was no headboard.
They lay together under a single patchwork blanket, a crazy thing of sewn-together bits and pieces of a dozen old blankets, as if nothing was ever thrown away in their world, if a hole was worn in something it was patched or cut up to be used another way ... I saw this in the shelving that looked like it had come from the sides of an ancient, torn-down house, and in the rug, which also was a sewn patchwork of half a dozen others, colors clashing.
I admired this self-sufficiency ... or scavenging. I realized that a certain percentage of the population could live off the throw-aways of the rest. But it took skill and talent to do so. It was not shameful. The shame was in the waste.
Zeke was lying with his right arm under Rill's back. His hand was on her right breast, moving slowly under the blanket. Their shoulders were uncovered. Rill's right hip and right leg were bare. A fringe of her mahogany-red pubic hair was visible. There was no attempt to show it or keep it covered. That was simply the way the blanket had folded and that was all.
Rill was running a brush through Zeke's long gray hair. Lovingly.
Zeke smiled when he saw me. "Lark." His wise old eyes took in Owl and Blackbird, who had followed us in. He said, "Will you eat breakfast with us?"
I said, "I want to very much ... and I want to stay."
He nodded. "A great many young people want to stay with us."
Owl said, "She's different. She'd fit in. Everyone-likes her."
Zeke said, "We don't add units, Owl, we add parts of a whole." His gaze shifted gently to me. "We have no more bedrooms."
Owl said, "She'll share my bed."
"But she cannot be yours. We are a tribe, a whole, not a group of couples." His blue eyes held me. "Your love must be for all of us."
I nodded quickly, but held Owl's hand. "I know. And I do already. But I love Owl in a special way ... more."
"That's natural. But we are a sharing group. In everything. We share our bodies as we share our food and money and time and skill. The self is not submerged, but it is linked." He spoke calmly and softly. "We are all individuals, yet our individuality is limited in the tribe to those areas of life where it does not harm or interfere with the unit, the whole. That, at least, is the ideal." There was a tinge of sadness and wry knowledge of the imperfectibility of man and woman in his voice.
I said, "I think that's a beautiful ideal."
"But can you even attempt to live by it? Do you realize what it means."
"I think so."
"Do you love Blackbird? Are you willing to make love with him? If he asks you to go to bed with him ... will you?"
Zeke's voice was still kind, still calm, but he had jolted me again. I involuntarily looked around at Blackbird. He was grinning. I looked into Owl's face. I felt wide-eyed and pale. An icy partial thought glittered in my mind-fucked by a nigger!-and I saw myself under him, and he was grinning triumphantly down into my face, his wide, thick lips close, and his black penis was inside me, slamming deep-I wiped it out!
Owl was saying something. ". . . tribe way. I make it with Robin and Sparrow and Rill, too. That doesn't mean you can't prefer one to another, but you can't shut somebody out completely, or be exclusively mine. That's the square hang-up. That's what fucks up life for them."
Zeke said, "Possessiveness. 'He's mine!' 'She's mine!'"
I said weakly, "But I don't know Blackbird. Not well enough to...."
"You will. But if this is beyond your acceptance ... then we can't let you join us."
I nodded in understanding.
Zeke added, "There are other requirements. You must be a productive member of the tribe. You may not live here and contribute nothing. Nor may you simply coast on savings and do nothing, even if you contribute your share. You must complement us. You must be something and someone we need."
I searched in myself for something I could do that would be of value to the tribe. I clung to Owl desperately.
Rill said, "She is a poet and a songwriter. She helped me last night in the kitchen willingly, without being asked. I could use her help in the house. It is too much for me and what little time Sparrow can give."
Zeke said, "Lark, the contribution is seventy dollars a month for each of us. That is for rent and food."
I had some money in a savings account. Over two hundred dollars. I asked, "Until I get a job ... can I pay from money I have in a bank?, I was suddenly eager, because he seemed to be about to accept me. He wouldn't have mentioned the money thing otherwise.
"Of course. But you must understand that you will not really be one of us until after we see, and you see, if you like it, if you really can live happily the tribe way, and if you can give up the square values you have lived with all your life. They go deep and are not easily left behind."
"I know. All I ask is a chance."
Rill shifted slightly. The blanket fell away from Zeke's hand on her right breast. The breast was big and full. His thumb and forefinger held the large dark-red nipple and continued rubbing it gently.
Zeke said, "Then you are now provisionally one of the tribe. We'll all show you our way. We'll all answer your questions."
I said, "Thank you. I have a stereo record player, a good portable, in my room in my family's house. And some money out there, and clothes. Could Owl and I drive out there so I can get my things?"
Owl said, "I don't drive."
Zeke asked, "Are you free to live with us? What about your parents?"
"I'm nineteen. I'm old enough to do what I want. And my mother will be glad I'm gone!"
"Do you have I.D.? "
"Yes. In my suitcase."
"I believe you. Do your parents know you've left and what you intend doing?"
"Yes, by now, I think. I put a note on their bedroom door when I left this morning."
Zeke nodded. His white hair shone from Rill's constant brushing and stroking. He said, "We'd better get up now. You can help Rill with breakfast, Lark. And later Blackbird will drive you to your house for your things."
A funny, half-scared feeling blossomed in me. I still hadn't come face to face with the certainty of sex with Blackbird. I still hadn't accepted it.
I looked at him again. He drew a lungful of smoke from the butt of his cigarette and looked boldly back at me. My heart was still pounding. He was so black! I told myself he was only a man. Rill had accepted him. And Robin ... her, too? I could do it. I wasn't hung up on the race thing! I wasn't!
I realized Zeke had deliberately given Blackbird the task of driving me to the valley. It would be a long trip. We would have about two hours to talk, to get to know each other, and I could find those parts of him which I could relate to; I could get past the color of his skin and discover he was human, a person. It was a test.
I realized Zeke was watching me. I smiled. "That'll be fine. We can get to know each other."
Owl said, "Let's go down to the kitchen. I'll help you start things, till Rill gets down."