“Thanks, man,” the hippie boy said. “We been out there for an hour an’ all the straights just passed us by.”
“Where you headed?” I asked.
“Shasta,” the girl said. She leaned up against the seat between me and her boyfriend. I could see her grinning into my eyes through the rearview mirror.
“That’s where you live?”
“We heard about this commune up there,” the boy said. He smelled of patchouli oil and sweat.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?” he asked.
“Commune. What’s that?”
“You never heard of a commune, man?” the boy asked.
“My name’s Easy,” I said. “Easy Rawlins.”
“Cool,” the girl crooned.
I suppose she meant my name.
“Eric,” the boy said.
“Like the Viking,” I said. “You got the red hair for it.”
He took this as a compliment.
“I’m Star,” the girl said. “An’ a commune is where everybody lives and works together without anybody owning shit or tellin’
anybody else how to live.”
“Kinda like the kibbutz or the Russian farms,” I said.
“Hey man,” Eric said, “don’t put that shit on us.”
“I’m not puttin’ anything on you,” I replied. “I’m just trying to 1 1 2
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understand what you’re saying by comparing it with other places that sound like your commune.”
“There’s never been anything like us, man,” Eric said, filled with the glory of his own dreams. “We’re not gonna live like you people did. We’re gettin’ away from that nine-to-five bullshit.
People don’t have to own everything. The wild lands are free.”
“Yeah,” Star said. Her tone was filled with Eric’s love for himself. “At Cresta everybody gets their own tepee and a share in what everybody else has.”
“Cresta is the name for your commune?”
“That’s right,” Eric said with such certainty that I almost laughed.
“Why don’t you come with us?” Star asked from the backseat.
I looked up and into her eyes through the rearview mirror.
There was a yearning there but I couldn’t tell if it was hers or mine. Her simple offer shocked me. I could have kept on driving north with those children, to their hippie farm in the middle of nowhere. I knew how to raise a garden and build a fire. I knew how to be poor and in love.
“Watch it!” Eric shouted.
I had drifted into the left lane. A car’s horn blared. I jerked my rented car back just in time. When I looked up into the mirror, Star was still there looking into my eyes.
“That was close, man,” Eric said. Now his voice also contained the pride of saving us. I was once an arrogant boy like him.
“I can’t,” I said into the mirror.
“Why not?” she asked.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen . . . almost.”
“I got a daughter just a few years younger than you. She’s real 1 1 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
sick. Real sick. I got to get her to a doctor in Switzerland or she’ll die. So no woods for me quite yet.”
“Where is your daughter?” Star asked.
“Los Angeles.”
“Maybe it’s the smog killin’ her,” Eric said. “Maybe if you got her out of there she’d be okay.”
Eric would never know how close he’d come to getting his nose broken in a moving car. It was only Star’s steady gaze that saved him.
“I had a friend once,” I said. “Him and me were something like you guys. We used to ride the rails down in Texas and Louisiana.”
