Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (2 page)

Dedicated to Louis and Judith Finneyfrock,
my best teachers

 1 

T
he owl hooted in a hemlock tree, cornstalks shook their arms in the wind, and Indus Stone's footsteps crunched beside mine on the gravel drive as we walked away from the main house. Summer fell further behind us with each step, and the trees exhaled their autumn breath, making me shiver. Everyone was in bed but the young people, story night had ended hours ago, and my heart raced like something was chasing me.

The moon was as perfect and white as a Buttercup hen's egg. It was visible between the fir trees reaching together over our heads.

“Indus is a southern hemisphere constellation. Why did EARTH name me after something I can't see?”

“Maybe you'll get a Calling to travel south.”

The goats bleated as we walked past their pen beyond the cornfield. The September air left a cold mist on my hair and clothes, so I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my wool sweater. In the distance, I could hear frogs croaking by the pond. It was well past midnight, but no part of me felt tired.

“Mom and I were talking in the house last night after dinner,” Indus said. Indus joined the Family with his parents when he was a child, so he still called his mother Mom, instead of by her name, Bithiah. “She told me why Dad left when I was a kid.”

Most of the big trees on the Farm were on either side of the driveway. The rest had been torn out to create the back lot. But the Douglas firs by the house were old-growth, some over two hundred feet tall.

“I thought he left because he got a Calling,” I said.

“So did I.” Indus stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He kicked some gravel on purpose with his boot. At nineteen, Indus stood six inches taller than me and walked gracefully with long strides. “Turns out he couldn't handle Mom sleeping with EARTH.”

“Whoa,” I said, stopping. The owl hooted again. “Your dad gave in to jealousy?”

Indus kept walking, talking back to me over his shoulder. “That's what Mom accused him of.”

I had a flashlight in the pocket of my jeans, but we didn't need it because of the moonlight's glow on the gravel. On either side of the path, though, the trees and ferns held a close, wet darkness. We walked on together until we came to a clearing on our left, and then we climbed a muddy slope to the chicken coop. I checked for signs of predators while the hens made sleepy clucking noises inside the roost.

“The fence looks good,” said Indus, leaning against the wood railing of the chicken run, lacing his fingers into the wire covering on top. “You need more corn for the feed this week?”

“Yeah, I already asked your brother. Will you tell him to stop calling me Starchicken? It's not funny.”

“It's kind of funny.” Indus let his head drop back toward his shoulders and looked at the sky.

“Hilarious for you. You got a real apprenticeship.”

“What's wrong with the chickens? It's an important job.”

“Oh yeah, critical,” I said, testing the door to the coop to make sure it was closed tight. We walked back to the gravel drive.

“So, your dad wanted to own your mom?” I asked, pausing to scrape some mud from my boot off onto the gravel.

“I hate it that everyone uses that word,” said Indus. “Is it so crazy to want to be with just one person?”

My chest erupted in red, blotchy spots. I could feel them down there, hidden under my sweater. “Well, it's dangerous.” I stole a glance at him. “If you love one person, and that person leaves you or dies, then you're all alone. Your dad left, but you still have lots of dads.”

“Yeah, and they keep leaving, too. I think we're down to about six dads now.” He laughed darkly.

“You shouldn't joke about that. EARTH will be back soon.”

“You say that.” Indus kicked a pinecone off the path, looked off into the trees. “But name one person who came back after being gone for years.”

My stomach flopped like a dying fish and my mouth went dry.

“I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about Doug,” Indus said.He reached over and gave me an awkward, reassuring pat, the way a person would pat a dog if he didn't really like dogs.

“You think Doug's not coming back?” I kept scraping my boot on the ground.

“Your brother was the smartest guy I ever knew.
Know
.
Is
the smartest guy I know.” Indus ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair. I trimmed it for him sometimes, if Bithiah was too busy. It needed to be cut again. “Doug's fine out there.”

“But you don't think he's coming back. Or EARTH. You think they both abandoned us?” I asked it forcefully, like an accusation, and I didn't really want to hear the answer. I felt the chilly air through a hole in my sweater.

Indus sighed. “Don't you feel abandoned?”

“Why should EARTH come back if the Farm is full of non-Believers?” I started walking again.

“That's always it with you,” he said, following me. “Someone's either a Believer or a non-Believer.”

Red blotches spread like fire across my neck and shoulders. “What else is there?”

Indus threw his arms out and looked around. “What if you just don't know? What if you're still figuring the world out? Is that an option?”

“If you don't believe that we were brought together for a reason, then why would you stay?” I said, walking faster. “Why wouldn't you just run off like your dad did?”

“Sure, blame my dad. Because you couldn't possibly blame EARTH for anything, could you?”

“Your dad gave in to jealousy. He acted like an Outsider. That's not EARTH's fault.”

Indus grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop in the gravel. “Do you really think it's so wrong to want to love one person? To love them enough that you don't want to share them with anyone?”

We had reached the fire pit, meaning I was almost back to the yurt I lived in with my mother. The owl hooted again. There was malice in the sound. It was a barred owl known for diving at people when it felt territorial. Its talons had dragged through my hair more than once on a night walk.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It felt like a bird had flown from a fir tree, into my throat and down my chest, flapping its wings where my voice should have been. “You can't doubt EARTH. You have to keep believing in him,” I managed to say.

“You didn't answer me,” said Indus. “What do you think about loving only one person?”

I had only loved one person my whole life, and he was in front of me talking about love and sex and love in the dark, under the moon. “Jealousy does seem destructive,” I said, “but I guess I can't really imagine loving more than one person.”

That's when Indus Stone, chest thick as a tree trunk, pulled me into a hug that left only my toes on the ground, his arms around my shoulders so all I could do was snake my hands up to his back. I put my nose into his shirt and inhaled. Nothing existed but the egg moon and the gravel noise and his smell.

Then he did something I'd been dreaming he would do since I was old enough to braid my own hair: He kissed me. Gently at first, so our noses touched and our chins and our lips pressed together. It was sweet. It was so sweet I thought it might kill me the way too much chocolate can kill a puppy. And I don't know how long we kissed like that—a hundred hours?—until something started heating up, like sticks rubbing together to make smoke, and I pulled my arms from under his and wound them around his neck and then we were kissing ferociously, our lips wet and tense. There were some gravel noises and then my back was against a Sitka spruce and the sap was grabbing my hair. Our hands started searching each other's bodies for something. I reached under his sweatshirt and felt the muscles of his chest connect with the muscles in his arms. We gasped and clawed at each other, and I wouldn't have cared if a brown bear was scratching the other side of the tree, or if the owl was flying toward us with his talons out, I wouldn't have stopped. But Indus finally backed away and unwound my body from his. I was sixteen and it was the first time a boy had ever kissed me.

I would have followed him anywhere that night: to the barn, to the orchard, on a deer trail across the border to British Columbia. But Indus said, “Well. Okay. Good night,” like we had just been shaking hands, and his boots graveled off toward the Sanctuary and I guess I must have stumbled toward the yurt village because I ended up at my door, but I don't remember opening it or taking off my boots. I do remember my mother rolling over on her cot when I entered, and the sticky sap in my hair getting on the pillow and the raw skin on my lower back where it had rubbed against the bark and trying and trying to get my heart to slow down and go to sleep, thinking of nothing but him.

 2 

E
very Family member's Calling comes in a different way.

When Mercury Ocean got his Calling to build a tree house in a red cedar and refrain from touching the ground, it came to him in a dream.

When Indus's mom got her Calling to have a third child, she said that also came to her in her sleep, but she laughed after she said it.

When a kid called Eagle Feather got his Calling to hitchhike to Alaska, it came in a letter from his Outside father. We haven't heard from Eagle since he left seven years ago. His mother cried for two weeks straight, but she never tried to stop him.

Every child daydreams about her Calling. I imagined mine would include a position in the Farm management, like my brother, Douglas Fir. I hoped it would include having children with Indus Stone. I never dreamed that my Calling would arrive at the Free Family Farm in a refrigerated truck one week after Indus kissed me, at the start of the wettest September anyone could remember, and that it would be cussing up a storm.

“Dumb-ass, stupid-ass, freaking truck.”

I was walking down the slope from the chicken coop toward the gravel drive carrying my second egg collection of the day when I heard someone kicking the driver's side door. Not many vehicles came and went from the Farm, so people were emerging from the main house to investigate. I looked around for Indus but didn't see him.

“Does anybody know anything about stupid-ass, freaking refrigerator trucks?” the driver yelled in the direction of the main house. “It's been smoking since Everett.”

“Iron John's on the back lot with the tractor,” said Fern Moon from the porch, wiping her hands on the flowered apron she wore in the farmhouse kitchen. “Have some lunch and wait for him to come back.”

The driver pulled the mass of brown curly hair back from her forehead, sighed, and tossed her keys into the open window of the truck. She walked up the steps and through the screen door.

“Come in for lunch, Starbird,” Fern called to me.

If I had been born five years earlier or five years later on the Farm, I might have ended up calling Fern Moon “Mom,” but I was raised during the decade when EARTH praised the strengthening of ties to the Communal Family over ties to the maternal and paternal members. I was taught to think of all the women on the Farm as my mom and all the men as my dad. For this reason and others, I've never known the identity of my biological father.

“I can help you package up the eggs for the truck after we eat,” Fern said. I walked up to the porch and followed her into the main house.

 
 

The kitchen windows were coated with a fine layer of mist, and four iron skillets were steaming from under lids on the stove.

“Why didn't Ephraim come today?” Fern asked the driver, pouring hot water from the kettle and handing her a cup of tea.

“He's sick as a dog and so is Cham. There's a bug going around Beacon House,” the newcomer said miserably, pushing her purple sunglasses up to rest on her head. She was wearing a black tank top and jean shorts, and two red bra straps perched visibly on her shoulders.

Just then, eleven-year-old Ursa ran into the kitchen from the long room with her little brother, Pavo, trailing behind her. Pavo was holding up his pants at the waist with one hand. “We tried waving at Iron from the hill, but he didn't see us.” Ursa was out of breath.

“He gets lost in his head back there.” Fern picked up a metal spoon. “Wash your hands.”

Ursa and Pavo went to the deep porcelain sink and put their hands under the faucet. They were both tall enough now to reach the knobs easily, but still young enough to wrestle over the bar of soap. Their birth mother, Eve, walked in behind them, moving slowly because she was six months pregnant. She adjusted the drawstring on Pavo's pants.

“So, this is your first pickup?” Fern said to the driver.

“Yes, and I hate it. What's going to happen if I get pulled over? I don't have a license. We're so short staffed at the restaurant, I can't remember my last day off. Ephraim told me to ask if any of you wants to come work in Seattle. We've got a bed free in Beacon House, and we need a waitress desperately.”

Ursa spun around from the sink, letting her wet hands drip on the floor. “A Calling!” she announced to the room, her eyes widening to the size of cherries. Ursa had just turned eleven and had recently become obsessed with Callings the way some girls are with horses. “Who's it for?” The water kept sputtering out of the tap behind her.

“Ursa, don't waste water.” Fern motioned for Pavo to turn off the spigot.

“Who's the Calling for?” Ursa asked, as if she hadn't heard Fern, looking from one person to the next.

“It's not necessarily a Calling just because someone has shown up from Beacon House needing something.” Fern tightened the string ties on her apron. “Beacon House is full of needs, just like the Farm.”

“The Calling is for her,” said Ursa, raising her still dripping hand and pointing her finger at me. Three more drops of water fell from her finger to the wooden floor. Everyone turned their heads and stared.

 
 

There are lots of rules on the Free Family Farm where I was born. Some rules are posted on the walls as helpful reminders in every common space of the main house, sanctuary, and grounds. For example, above the iron stove in the kitchen is a sign reminding each user never to let the wood box get empty. Hanging on the door to each outhouse in the yurt village, a sign reads,
CLEANLINESS IS COSMIC
. And inside the front door of the Farm's main house is a sign saying,
NEVER ALLOW A POLICE OFF
ICER INSIDE WITHOUT
A WARRANT
.

These are the everyday rules, the agreements that help us live together in comfort and security. They're important, but not as important as our true and guiding rules, what we call “The Three Principles.”

One: The Free Family is chosen by the Cosmos.
Two: The Cosmos provides for us and we share what is given equally.

Three: Everyone in the Free Family gets a Calling.

Our first Principle tells us that we are chosen. There are still Family members who haven't been found yet, so EARTH periodically goes on Missions to collect our missing members. Our second Principle is about sharing. There is no such thing as personal property in our Family; everything we own, we own together. We share work, too, with each adult Family member filling a job suited to him or her.