California

Raleigh and I decided to go on a fast. I think we were partly inspired by the Californian vibe and I also had a book that I had bought years ago filled with fasts for each season, and it seemed now was an opportunity to do one. Just water, mixed with lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup for the energy. You could drink as much as you wanted. A water fast, a spring fast, the master cleanse. I was trimming weed, so it was easy work, easy to work on nothing, so it seemed well timed.We started on a Thursday and the day before Raleigh cut out coffee, bread, most things other than fruit and vegetables. I didn’t, continuing to do things with a halfhearted measure, perhaps in order to protect myself from failure, as ‘I didn’t really try’. I ate all things I normally would. Brushing off Raleigh’s worry of preparing my body for what it was about to undergo. I was young, I was strong.We had met Anne and Francois at one of those outdoor events they have up there, some kind of fundraiser, but with great food and live music. I don’t know who had begun the conversation, in the whirl of beer and cigarettes, as the night had gone on into a swirl of people and dancing, she had approached us, I think, with her bright blue dress that matched her piercing eyes, and Francois, the Frenchman, had been there too, quietly he had asked to roll one or two of my cigarettes. And she was so warm, and knew Cassidy, and we were drunk, so we fell into each other, they were growers of course, and they would have work for us in a few weeks.  So we drove up to Anne and Francois’ for a session of trimming on the Friday. Their house was a mixture of additions and plans, wooden frame and with the ubiquitous Northern Californian shingles. They had built it room by room, and had lain in bed in the early days, with the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls, the bed piled high with quilts, drinking whiskey and reading books. It perched above their gardens, California valleys falling away to the horizon. They had a great long, hardwood table as they all did up there, and the vegetable garden was beautifully landscaped, the marijuana intermingling with the tomatoes. Anne offered the use of her washing machine and her shower. Before all the hot water was gone, I jumped in the shower to try to scrub off some of the lines of dirt, and then the laundry could go on. The work was set up outside. A long table piled high with stems. In the bright sunlight. I had taken to wearing gloves, to prevent any contact high, and just to save myself from the inevitable stickiness that came from handling marijuana buds for long periods of time.The laundry finished, I padded on bare feet through the airy house. I pulled the clothes out of the machine, and walked out the front door to where the line was strung between two trees overlooking the valley. I piled up the washing, the darker clothes on the dirt. The washing was bright and white, clean and wet, it flapped as I pegged it up, and the sun beat down on my head. The wind blew all the colours clear and cool. A simple job, such a pleasure it gave me. I felt the fast had heightened my senses. I couldn’t hear the others talking, just see the valley falling away, and hear the snapping of the clothes. I realised how good I felt. Such happiness I felt at such a simple job.Jacob came around the side of the house, still laughing, ‘Anne’s cooked some lunch, want any?...He swung his arms around my shoulders as I bent to pick up the last of the wet clothes, and his arms slid off. I said nothing, just pointed to my glass bottle half full with the maple syrup mixture.‘Oh, I forgot.’‘I’ll just finish hanging this out and then I’ll be there.’I had started to feel a certain lightness that morning, my stomach was flat, and I felt very in control of my body and myself. I felt focussed. Tighter. I felt released from the unnecessary. Emotionally and physically. This was only the second day but I remembered what it was like to be in control of one’s body. To hear one’s body. To listen. He was still loose out there. And I was not jealous. I did not want what he had. Unusual feeling for me. Focussed on what was important. Tight reins. But I was holding them. I enjoyed the feeling of control I had. Saying no was difficult to obtain, but once done, then all fell into place. They all drove back in the truck and I walked. I walked slowly the dusty road as it trailed through the dark redwoods, and then doubled back on itself along a ridge in the sun. My soul was light. As the road slipped down, back into the shade, a deer startled me. She was walking on the road towards me, a small one, I tried to stop breathing, and waited, my feet in the dirt in the sun, the deer in the quiet shade, she looked and looked, and I tried to hold her there with me on the dappled road. Her gentle eyes, and my human ones, and we wondered for, it seemed long, a long time, before finally I moved, and she bounded into the padded forest. I didn’t want to get back to the mess, the music, the noise. It was easy to walk what was left of the road, slowly, in my own life, to hold back the rest.

Drawbridges

Then he was outside with my friend Noel, with his bandana on now and they were smoking a joint, passing it back and forth and he was in the tree, the old gum, spot lights shining up the long trunk, turning it silver, while I sat inside with the others and didn’t care about trees and people who climbed them. He told me he had sailed here. And later he told me that he had been waiting tables where the curious customers had chatted and asked and asked, staring up at him, trapping him with empty glasses in his hands.

- And what now, Jacob, now that college is finished?

And he had thought of a place far from Vermont, a place where the seasons did not cut up the years, a place and a way of movement so unlikely they would be forced to look down to their full plates when he passed.

- I am going to Australia. I am going to hitchhike to Australia, hitchhike boats.

They snorted.

- Impossible. Can’t be done. 

They swallowed their rich food, swilling their wine around their mouths.

But he knew it could be done. He had done it.  As a younger man hanging from a bridge one night near Calais, late one night with his mate Jason-the-drummer, after playing three bars, and giving up on the dancing Virginias, they had decided to walk out of town and camp. The moon, of course, was full. They shared their last joint as they waited for the draw bridge. And Jacob impatient, could see nothing they were waiting for, no vessels, until he clambered over the barricade and saw a bobbing white yacht, small, about 28 feet long.

-Oy. And in jest had thrown his thumb up. The man in the dark let his engine idle and called up.

- Where you goin’ mate?

- England!

- Got any drugs on yer?

And truthfully, they had not, no longer.

- You’ll have to stay awake.

John Johnson steered the yacht over, pulled over to a place where the boys could drop onto the deck as light footed as any ship cats, while his family slept beneath. He had left them by England’s white cliffs in the new morning and the boy had understood that his road was not limited to land. The answer Jacob had given to those diners in New England had become his impetus. Once articulated, it was no longer far from real, as those things we say become true.   

The First Swim

We swam in the brackish water of a lake at the end of our seventh day.  I was by the passenger window, my skin burning with the heat of the road. The water came in flashes of light between the scrub. We got out further than we wanted, and dived straight into the bush before tramping back about five hundred metres to make our camp. The day was ending and the smell of dry grass rose as our feet, hot in tight boots, squashed it down. We crossed the road away from the water. Clouds of insects flew as he laid out the fly and I snapped the poles together, working silently, thinking about our swim. We threw our packs into the tent and again we darted across the road, and burst out of the scrub into the bright opening of the sun on the lake. My skin was stiff with dirt and filthy from the road and I didn’t care about the still water. The water changed from pale yellow to pink, and he smiled at me with the water up to his wrists and I knew I wanted to remember. Later in our tent we heard someone’s radio out there in the darkness and he got up, and unzipped the fly, and stomped about with a torch. I stayed crouching in the tent, listening, as Paul Kelly came on the invisible radio.  And I was living then, and my decision to  leave, mixed with the man I had to chosen to leave with, all fell in notes around me in the Australian dark and I loved him.