Chapter One
They were just fading
at dawn, bodies sprawled across the interior of the farm house like mannequins,
each limb frozen into its last drug-induced orgasm faces thrust into one
another's bosom, men with men, women with women, a mingling of both, gasping as
if dying rather than making love.
Chris clutched the
inside ledge of the window with both hands, keeping her back to it, wishing it
out of existence. She did not understand how people could let themselves get so
out of control.
But each time it had
come down to this. Each shipment of dope from Denver called for such a ritual.
Not that the drug lords up north cared about the sampling, no doubt taking into
account the habits of their hippie connections, adding enough for indulgences
at each step along the route.
But this time,
something was wrong. Chris couldn't say just what, which made her warnings to
the other sound vague. It was a feeling she had that had grown over the last
few weeks until it throbbed in her temples.
It was the silence
outside the house.
Normally there were
birds and occasional trucks moving along the Route 66 in and out of
Albuquerque.
Now there was
nothing. Just a slight breeze through the stalks of corn. Her garden, a puddle
of green below the window while everywhere else dusty and grey, the Chihuahuan
Desert haunting the flat, sunbaked plains just south.
Someone was watching
the house, hidden in the folds of earth. The police, maybe. Or someone darker.
More deadly. She could measure the danger by the pain in her head.
God only knew how far
the music had reached, perhaps as far as downtown, rocking the five blocks of
the old city with Hendrix and Stones.
All during the worst
of it, Chris had ached to crawl down into her garden and hide among its wilting
leaves, as if that was the final reason for her mothering each precious stalk
up from the dusty soil, a reason other than the need for some ritual by which
to fill in the empty hours and days and weeks of waiting.
Michael was coming.
He was the sole
reason she had come to Alburquerque.
It was too windy most
of the time, and too hot, as if walking around with a hair dryer blasting her
face all day. While a night, the cold eased in like a desert animal, curling
around the windows and doors, catching sleepers unawares. On other days, if she
listened hard enough, she could hear the toot of the Sante Fe train as it made
its way in and then out, the station sprawling with blankets and her distant,
red-skinned relations selling jewelry, tapestries and baskets to the tourists.
Since coming here
from Detroit, via Chicago, via a hundred other small rest stops throughout the
western part of the convenient, Chris had sensed Michael's coming, and waited
for him.
His face floated
somewhere in the back of her mind, a distant ghost she couldn't exorcise,
whispering noises of their own lovemaking now years out of date.
There!
Something moved
across her field of vision. A flash of chrome on the upper level of the zig-zag
drive way down from the highway, a poor-man's drive carved between chunks of
red stone and sharp sandstone boulders the builders had been too cheap or lazy
to remove. It circled back on itself, and a common joke among the residents who
often sat stoned on the porch watching visitors start in one way only to
reverse themselves on the second swing.
She squinted and
waited and a moment later the red and blue cherry top appeared, moving in like
a shark fin over the sandy soil, jeep wheels sputtering up gravel despite their
careful crawl.
Cops! she screamed
and leaped from the window sill, kicking the first set of limbs she
encountered, the dull thud of her boots striking flesh elicited an equally dull
cry of pain and annoyance.
``Didn't you hear
me?'' she said, leaning down, nose to nose with one of the so-called commune
leaders, though not Jorge. ``It's a raid.''
The man's eyes
widened, the dilated pupils translating the words for the drug-numbed brain.
Slowly, their meaning registered, and he sat up.
``What? Where?''
``Outside,'' Chris
said, gesturing towards the window and sill from which she had leaped. ``I saw
the top of the cars as they swung around the drive.''
``Damned our fucking
luck,'' the man, Dennis, grumbled, rolling up onto all fours, his hairy back
like a mangy dog's, scabs of sunburn still pealing beneath. He yanked up his
pants as he nudged his old lady with his bare foot. ``Up, baby, the world`s on
fire.''
It took more precious
moments for the others to rouse, climbing up out of their drug sleep as if
rising from the death, limbs untangling from limbs, penises from vaginas, the
faces of the innocent painted into the growing colors of panic.
``Flush everything,''
Dennis shouted.
``What? You're
crazy!'' someone else shouted back. ``That’s millions of bucks of... Hey, where
did it go?''
``Where did what
go?'' someone else asked.
``The suitcases, damn
it,'' a fourth voice asked. ``Someone's swiped the dope.''
Then, the panic
really started as people rose and moved from room to room, searching for the
missing shipment. Chris stared. They were wasting time searching for ghosts.
Someone had drawn the big dope out of the way for the moment, but there was
plenty of other stuff around, pipes full, and plastic bags of Mexican weed,
enough to send them all to jail for a long, long time.
By the time the
thought occurred to flush that, people were too confused, bumping into each
other in pointless changes of direction, like trapped rats seeking a way out of
a maze that had no exit.
City kids, Chris
thought and glanced at the window again, noticing now an almost endless stream
of cherry tops working down the drive, like an army of ants descending upon a
cube of sugar. City kids here on a lark without the faintest idea of what life
meant in a commune. It was just one long vacation for them, full of lovemaking
and dope, a rest stop between college and the rest of their lives.
She rushed to the
door and out onto the porch where the bright rising sun blinded her after the
dim interior. A dust trail showed along the drive, and she could hear the tires
spitting up gravel as police cars popped out into the front yard. One, two,
three, and then she stopped counting, forgetting everything but the urge to
hide. She leaped over the porch rail and into the dying green garden below, her
hand striking the stony soil, palms scraped and bleeding. Around her the sick
smell of tomato leaves made her want to sneeze.
Had they seen
her? She lay with her face down into the
soil, dry dust working up into her mouth and nostrils with every hurried
breath. She felt vulnerable with only the leaves to block out their sight and
began a slow crawl toward the walls and the piece of plyboard she had slid
across a hole there. Not much better protection than the leaves, but the
combination might just keep the police from a more thorough investigation.
The building lacked a
basement, but a narrow space existed between the living room floor and the
ground, where coyotes and rodents sometimes hid during cold weather. She barely
fit between the rock and the wood floor above, but she managed to turn around
and pull close the plywood before boots sounded on the porch and fists pounded
on the front door.
``Open up, it's the
police,'' a deep voice yelled.
That's when the panic
really started and the crying and the begging for mercy, city children suddenly
caught in the web of reality. Glass broke. Police plunged into the house
through doors and windows, yelling at foolish, drugged kids to halt or be shot.
No shots sounded, but feet scurried around the upper story for what seemed like
hours, as hand cuffs were administered, and bodies dragged out. Chris saw their
shadows through the cracks in the floor. One by one, the flower children were
dragged out and down the stairs. She counted their footsteps as their sobs
ended in a slamming car door and the spit of gravel as they cars drove off,
until all the cars and cops had gone, leaving behind an even more uncomfortable
silence. But by Chris' count, the cops had come up at least one hippie
short....
Hip Cities and Lost Souls (Version 2)menu
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