Chapter 7

Two days later I stepped out of one of the phone booths outside the Safeway in Venice and said to Rill "No answer. I guess mother's out somewhere shopping.' It was ten-thirty in the morning.

Rill nodded. She picked up one grocery bag. I picked up the other. She said, "It would save money to write a letter to tell them you are safe and well." She smiled. "You don't have to argue and answer questions."

"You're right." I had checked the beach front apartment house they had left on schedule. They had to be back at the house. In a way I felt abandoned. Maybe subconsciously I had expected them to call the police and make a big fuss ... Maybe I was testing their love.

I felt kind of let-down as Rill and I walked back to the tribe house.

When we entered the house I noticed a well-built young man sitting on the floor in the living room talking to Blackbird over the radio sound. The stereo was being given a rest until we got a new needle. He had on oil-stained jeans, an old white dress shirt and worn sneakers. His sandy-blonde hair was cut short and neatly trimmed. I caught part of what he was saying as we passed on the way to the kitchen.

". . . was holding, man. I'm from Riverside. There's a going little underground there."

"Yeah? Who in it?"

"Oh ... I don't know too many names...." The young man looked around at us. He looked intently. He appeared about twenty-five years old.

We continued on into the kitchen. I didn't see anything of the two teen-age girls who had slept on the sofas and eaten breakfast with us.

Sparrow was in the kitchen with a big laundry bag stuffing in the old dish towels we had on the racks beside the sink. Her baby, Tommy, crawled on the floor by her feet. She winked and said in a whisper, "Blackbird think that one's a narc."

A little tremor of fear went through me. "Why?"

"He can smell 'em. He just know. He always right, too." She pulled the bag's drawstring and picked up Tommy. She swung the bag over her shoulder. The action pulled her painted blouse tight against her big, loose breasts for a second. "Be back in a hour and a half." She walked out of the kitchen, her sturdy brown legs showing one-third of her thighs beneath a plaid mini-skirt one of her outside friends had given her. Her buttocks flipped solidly.

I helped put away the groceries, then went into the living room. Blackbird and the young man were still there, still talking. I watched him sideways as I asked Blackbird, "Is Zeke upstairs?"

"Was a few minutes ago."

The man had clean fingernails. And his wallet, in his back pocket, was thick stuffed with a pack of celluloid card carriers I noticed that easily. What was a hippie doing with a raft of cards; probably business cards or credit cards and so on? And maybe the bulging wallet held a bulky steel badge! He looked up at me and said, "Hi. What's your name?"

I got cold inside. "Lark."

"No, I mean your real name. I'm Jack Fitch." He smiled. He glanced at his wrist.

"Just Lark." I noticed his right wrist showed the white bank of skin from a constantly worn wristwatch, no longer there. And his third finger left hand showed the mark of a wedding ring. I said to Blackbird, "I want to see him about something," meaning Zeke, and I turned around and went upstairs.

I was reminded again that I had left my own watch upstairs in the bathroom on the low end table beside the washbowl, and I had been doing the same thing glancing at an empty wrist.

I heard talking in Owl's room as I got to the top of the stairs. The door wasn't closed. I had to walk in. The two girls were sitting cross-legged on the bed looking at drawings in a sketch pad. Neither one of them was more than fifteen. Owl was by the window, working on a painting.

I asked him, "Is Zeke in his room?"

Owl shrugged, irritated by the stupid question, and irritated by the two girls who were looking at sketches of nudes, some of Sparrow and some of Rill. But suffered them.

I went down the hall Zeke's door. It was barely ajar. I peeked in and saw him sitting at his old desk. He was pecking away steadily on a portable typewriter.

I decided to wait a few minutes. Besides, I had to go to the bathroom. I was just entering the bathroom when the two young girls came out of Owl's room, one saying, " ... yeah, wow, but if you can't ... " They went down the stairs.

My watch wasn't where I had left it. I looked around, didn't see it, and decided Owl or somebody had taken it for safekeeping. I felt an urge to urinate, so I pulled down my clothes and sat on the pot.

A few minutes later I was outside Zeke's door again. I waited till he sat back a little and stopped typing for a few seconds. "Zeke, can I see you a minute?"

"Of course, Lark." He stretched and pushed away from the desk as I entered the room.

I said, "There's a man downstairs in the living room Sparrow say Blackbird thinks is a narc. He's trying to pose as a hippie, but he's got a wallet full of cards in plastic holders, you know? like my dad's wallet. And "

"I know. Sparrow told me a few minutes ago. I'll go down in a while and ask him if he's hungry. If he is we'll feed him. If he isn't I'll ask him to leave."

"Why don't you throw him out now? He's asking all kinds of questions."

"Blackbird can handle him. We've had them in before. They think all they have to do is wear old clothes and use our words." Zeke smiled wearily.

"I didn't say anything to him. He wanted to know my real name and I just told him Lark."

"Good."

I chewed my lower lip for a few seconds. I used a finger to push hair strands from my face. "There's something else."

He waited. "You are free to say anything."

"Well ... it may not be anything, but this morning Owl and I were fooling around a little in bed and I squeezed him and ... pumped him a little ... and a drop of greenish pus came out, and he said this morning it burned when he went to the bathroom."

Zeke nodded. I managed to go on. I would never have been able to say such things to my dad, or mother. They would have gotten all up-tight and tense and nervous ... "And I noticed a discharge myself just now." A wild, incredulous thought came to me could David have infected me?

Zeke said, "Thank you for telling me, Lark. Thank you for not hiding it and not being ashamed. I'll make an appointment at the health clinic and we'll all go over tomorrow to get smears taken. If one or two are infected it doesn't take long for all of us to pick it up. It's happened before. It'll happen again." He said it calmly, matter-of-factly. Then he smiled and said warmly, "You are becoming one of us very quickly. I like the way you are helping and doing things."

I felt so happy I was close to tears. "Thank you."

A minute later I left his room and went down the hall to see Owl. He was still painting. I told him about the man downstairs and about the suspected infection.

He made a face. "That damn Blackbird. He screws around, gets a dose and spreads it here! Now I'll lose two or three hours tomorrow waiting over there for the tests and getting shot."

"It might not be his fault." I felt kind of funny: if Blackbird had infected me, and I had infected Owl ... I had a crawly sensation on my skin.

"He's always the one with the worst case, meaning he got it first."

"Oh." I watched Owl return to his painting. I said, "Did you take my watch from the bathroom this morning? I left it there and it's missing."

"No. I haven'-t seen it. Why did you leave it?"

"I took it off to wash, then forgot it till just now

...and it wasn't there."

Owl frowned. "Nobody in the tribe would take it. Blackbird's a bastard some ways but he doesn't steal." His face cleared. "Those fuckin' teenyboppers!"

"Those girls that were here?"

"Yeah, they used the bathroom a couple times." He put down his pallette board and headed for the door. "Come on, let's find them."

"It was only a sixty-dollar watch." I followed him downstairs.

Just to be sure, Owl asked Blackbird, Rill and Robin if they had seen my watch. None had. The young man who we thought might be a narc sort of blew his cover when he said, grinning, "Hippies steal from hippies?"

We ignored him. Owl took my hand and we went out to the sidewalk. There was no sign of the girls. He said, "The closest hock shop is over on Windward, by the beach."

We walked over there as fast as we could and asked the owner if he had taken in a watch like mine in the past few minutes, but he hadn't. We told him our story so he wouldn't buy it if the girls came later. We walked along the Ocean Front.

We were just passing the Pavilion when Owl's hand tightened on mine at his side. "There they are."

I saw them then, coming toward us. I said, "I can't just accuse them!"

"I can." He pulled me along. This was a new side of Owl I hadn't seen before.

The two girls saw us and stopped. They acted nervous and talked close together. Then they angled out into the beach.

We walked out on the sand, too, heading to intercept them. They saw us and knew it. One of the girls was talking hard to the other. They waited for us.

They didn't say anything as we approached. One of them, the smaller girl with ratty brown hair and a sort of puckish, snubnosed face wouldn't look up. The other girls looked sullen.

Owl said, "We missed a watch after you left."

The sullen girl jabbed the other with an elbow. "Give it to 'em. Come on, Barb!"

The other started to cry. She reached into her jeans and threw my watch down into the sand. "I don't care!"

Owl stooped over and picked it up. I was uncomfortable. I asked, "Why did you take it?"

The girl only sobbed louder. The other one said, "She's broke. She ran away from home and she wants to go back."

"Can't you call and ask your parents for money?"

Barb sobbed, "They don't have it. They don't give a shit if I come back anyway."

I watched her cry and I saw myself, myself without Owl and the tribe. I realized how lucky I was. I asked, "Don't you have any place to go?"

The other girl shook her head. "We're just bumming. I know a place but the boys make you put out. I don't mind, but Barb's still a virgin."

I stepped close to Barb and put my arms around her. She huddled against me and her sobs had the hopeless, despairing sound of the totally unloved and unwanted. It was terrible. I asked her, "How much do you need?"

"T-twelve dollars for a t-ticket ... "

I looked at Owl. He shrugged. I dug into my pocket and took out my money, some crumpled bills and some change. It amounted to sixteen dollars and thirty-five cents. I impulsively pressed it into her hand. "Here. Go home."

Owl squeezed my waist when we headed back to the tribe house. He kissed me on the cheek. "You're a fine chick."