The Best People in the World (12 page)

“Alice is an educator,” said Shiloh.

“I was teaching at a high school,” explained Alice.

Gregor was slapping his forehead again, but in a different way, as if he couldn't believe his good fortune. “Just the other day I was telling someone that the one thing we needed to find was an educator.”

“For the babies,” added Magdalena. On her calf she sported a tattoo of a mouse sitting on top of a wedge of Swiss cheese. The tattoo perplexed me.

Alice was trying to keep up with the conversation, but something held her up. “How do you run an educational nonprofit without any educators?”

“The licensing is just to establish a beneficial tax climate,” answered Gregor. “What it means is that when you initiate, every cent goes back into the corporation. Uncle Sam gets nothing for his war machine.”

“What do you mean ‘initiate'?” asked Shiloh.

“I don't like the word either,” said Magdalena, who started gathering our dirty dishes and carrying them to the back of the house.

“People in the family contribute labor and skill. That's the currency,” said Gregor. “We plant crops together and tend to the fields, and when we sell our harvest the proceeds benefit everyone. But with new folks we can't just give you a house to live in and put food in your stomach. You haven't contributed any work yet. If we did that we'd be running a deficit. Would you want to involve yourselves with a group that ran a deficit? It wouldn't be healthy. Instead of thinking of the initiation as the cost of joining our community, consider it bail you're paying to skip out on your old lives.”

“How much is the fee?” asked Shiloh.

“What's it worth to you to live here?”

Alice massaged her eyebrows with her fingertips.

Shiloh stared at his hands.

“Three hundred dollars,” I said.

Gregor gave me an appraising look. “It doesn't really make sense for us to have this conversation before you've seen the whole community.”

“Are there a lot of pheasants up here?” I asked.

“There are fewer every day,” Gregor said, standing up.

Apparently lunch was over. Gregor and Magdalena walked us to our car. I thought I was watching the ripples where invisible fish disturbed the surface of the pond, but it was only rain. Magdalena wrapped me up in her arms and kissed both my cheeks.

Alice started the car and we limped away. “Where the hell do we go now?” she asked.

Shiloh and I were in no rush to answer her. If you pointed in a direction and then things didn't pan out, that might confirm that you were unlucky or undeserving of luck. Rather than try to shape our destiny, it seemed safer to let things run their course.

The car had baked in the sun and now it refused to cool down. The heat was something we hadn't expected. We couldn't help but marvel at how, like some dim-witted pet, it had followed us.

I'd been watching a bright band of light flashing through the trees and finally I got a good view of it. “There's a river over there,” I said.

“Oh, man,” said Shiloh, “you know what that is? That's Lake Champlain.”

“Tell me how to get there,” said Alice.

But we'd made our way onto some highway, and there were no exits.

When the lake disappeared behind a low hill, it drove us crazy. We were like the mind of a suicide who cannot be consoled, impatient even after the bullet is on its way.

And once again we spied the flashing water.

Shiloh took his shirt off and held it out the window. It was a white shirt. It streamed alongside us, as though we were surrendering to the state. He let it go and the shirt hung above the roadway for an instant before our wake tumbled it to the asphalt.

Shiloh tilted his head back and howled at the ceiling. He kissed my cheek and then he kissed Alice's. A flashing yellow light marked our exit.

Alice took the corner at a reckless speed. We were racing toward the water. Immediately she had to jump on the brakes. The tires made a plaintive protest. Behind us the trailer turned onto its roof and skidded across the asphalt. On either side of the road, Little League games were in progress. The street was filled with kids, some in uniforms, others straddling bicycles, lined up before an ice-cream truck parked alongside the road. Parents and grandparents crowded bleachers. Our unfortunate entrance turned them all against us.

Shiloh and I got out of the car. The little kids shook their heads at
us. We rocked the trailer until we could get it back on its wheels. We clambered back into the car.

Everyone watched us creep away.

Shiloh slumped in the backseat and fooled with the hair on his chest. His eyes were this shade of blue-green, like seawater. They were his one exceptional feature. “We can live anywhere but here,” he said.

When we reached the end of the street, Alice sighed. She may have been holding her breath. We came around a corner and the only thing between us and that wonderful, glimmery lake was a hamburger joint with a dirt parking lot and some redwood tables with umbrellas. Alice drove to the back of the lot. We piled out of the car and ran toward the water.

The surface of the lake shone like chrome. Shiloh yanked his pants down. He wasn't wearing any underwear. He hadn't taken his shoes off, and now his pants tangled around his ankles. He lost his balance and toppled to the ground. I watched Alice peel her pants over her hips and pull her blouse over her head. In orange panties and black bra she walked backward into the lake. I followed her in my briefs. Ridiculous Shiloh, his ape arms and skinny legs, his soft, furry face, he ran in after us.

“No matter what happens,” I said, “it will be worth it just for this.” I believed that.

Alice and I porpoised in the water, pulling our underwear down to moon our friend.

Alice and I invented a game where we took turns baptizing each other. The winner was the one who performed the act with the most grace and piety. We repeated this over and over.

“I feel so
clean
,” said Shiloh. He used handfuls of mud to scour his chest and under his arms, until the skin glowed bright pink.

Alice took my hand and led me toward a clump of cattails. For whatever reason we were horny. The lake bottom became cold and muddy, but I followed her into the thick of the reeds. The sounds we made; the water's rhythmic slapping; our quick breathing; the dry stalks, all around us, rattled like bones.

9

Shiloh Takes a Stand

We ate dinner in a convenience-store parking lot. Maybe there were so many insects because so few lights competed for their attention. When we couldn't stand it a moment longer, we got back in the car. Alice drove a little farther, but her heart wasn't in it. She parked beside a clapboard church. “Sanctuary,” said Shiloh. We were all too tired to talk. Shiloh carried a few blankets off into the woods. Alice and I managed to spoon in the narrow backseat. Maybe we were thinner than I remember. I know we couldn't stand to be apart.

 

The revolutionary, Shiloh explained the next day, can't afford to let the perceived stand in for the actual. He was driving. Perception is a tool of the establishment, he said. He asked Alice and me to vow not to take anything for granted. He turned to see that we understood.

“And how does a person know they are perceiving the real?” asked Alice.

They both sounded like maniacs to me.

“I'm just reminding you to keep twisting your antennae,” said Shiloh. “The difference between what stands in for the world and the world itself is like the difference between a portrait of a loved one and their actual face.”

If I'd asked him to list the top five things on his mind, I don't think driving would have made the list.

Had we noticed the mountains? Shiloh asked. Their evergreen crowns? They were telling us something about this world. Ravens, Shiloh explained, were like muscular crows that lived high up in that pure mountain air. Did we believe that? Did we believe that there were big crows living on top of the mountains? Ravens, said Shiloh. Ravens.

I wanted to be back at the lake.

We were on a paved road that adjoined a fenced-in pasture when Shiloh stopped the car. There wasn't much of a shoulder to pull onto. He stepped out of the car and walked over to the fence. Pulling the
strands of wire apart, he entered a field with half a dozen Holsteins. The cows stopped their grazing to watch him approach.

“What's he doing now?” Alice asked.

I got out of the car.

“Which one's the bull?” I asked.

“I don't think there always is one,” said Shiloh.

“What will you do if they decide to stampede?”

Alice came up beside me and leaned her head against my shoulder.

“What do you suppose this is about?” she asked me.

Shiloh turned around to smile at us. “Check out the grass.”

Inside the enclosure everything had been nipped back, but where Alice and I were standing, it was vibrant and thick. I didn't think I'd ever seen healthier grass in all my life. It seemed a person might sustain themselves on the stuff.

One of the cows trotted over to investigate us. Its big wet eye lolled in the socket like one of those cheap key-ring compasses.

Alice wanted me to feed the cow.

I ripped up a handful of juicy stuff and reached over the top strand of the fence with it.

“Look,” said Alice, “there are veins on its udders.”

Shiloh came over and slapped the cow's flank. I expected some dramatic reaction. The cow meandered off.

“Well?” he asked.

“Wherever we're going, I hope we get there soon.” Alice started toward the car.

“Do you see what I was talking about?” Shiloh asked. “About the way we perceive things and the way they really are?”

“You mean the grass,” I said.

“I mean everything.”

10

Procession

I was driving. Shiloh sulked in the backseat. Alice had relieved him of the keys after he had almost wrapped the car around a telephone
pole, which, for no reason, had been planted dead center in the road. “I can't be held responsible for other people's thoughtlessness,” he said in explanation. Now it was raining so hard that the wipers couldn't keep up. When I spotted a pair of gas pumps in front of a general store, I saw an excuse to get off the road for a moment.

It was a soaking rain, not exactly warm. I wished Alice and I were on our way to another cottage motel, and this time I wouldn't let myself fall victim to sleep; in one of those tiny rooms, we'd be alone with our happiness. I topped off the tank and stuck my head in the car to get the money from Alice—she insisted on buying all the gas, since it was her car, and neither Shiloh nor I was in any position to argue. Shiloh had made it clear that, while he didn't have a great deal of money, were we to put a value on his technical expertise, he would be a full partner.

“That was dumb,” said Shiloh.

The rain drummed on the roof. “Huh.”

“You probably got water in the tank.” He mimed turning the ignition key. “Won't start.”

I felt like a kid.

“Or you're driving along when she conks out on you.”

Alice made no attempt to conceal the concern on her face.

Inside the store a middle-aged woman sitting behind the counter studied the cover of a book:
Contradance!
The cover was made up of diagrams of shoe prints. I asked if they sold a treatment for water in the gas tank.

She showed me two products. I asked for her suggestion. She pulled the more expensive of the two off the shelf. We walked back to the register.

When I returned outside the sky was unchanged, but the rain had stopped. I read the directions on the treatment and poured the bottle's contents into the tank.

Alice got out of the car and rested her arms on the roof. She tilted her head back and yawned. “What'd you get?”

I showed her.

We heard high, happy voices. Out on the road a pack of cyclists
climbed the hill. Their tires hissed on the wet pavement. Some of them wore clear plastic jackets that slapped and cracked against the pull of the wind. They rolled past, a collective breathing.

Shiloh got out of the car, turned to watch the last of the cyclists disappear around the next corner. “We ought to get bikes.” He turned back to us and smiled. He picked the package of gas treatment off the roof.

I didn't say anything.

“I hope you stole this stuff. Don't tell me you paid that price.”

I picked a point on the horizon and let my eyes rest there.

“We could fill a bathtub with this gunk for about a quarter of what they charge.”

Alice said, “Well, since we don't have a bathtub, I suppose Thomas made a wise choice.”

I was grateful that she'd come to my defense.

 

The Plymouth shivered up the loose gravel of those washboard, nowhere roads. The roads I chose petered out in trenchlike ruts, at muddy stream crossings. We found little hollows with one-room schoolhouses and corrugated steel hutches. Cornfields extended into the narrow pie slices of land where two similar roads reached an agreement. We saw a young girl riding a chestnut horse in her underpants. A man, his car, and a long machine, alone in a clearing, split wood; the man fed the machine rounds of wood and the machine halved them. The land canted and tilted and fell away. I lost all faith in the here and there. The name of the countryside was déjà vu. The roads digressed. I drove too fast and nobody tried to stop me. I caught myself grinding my teeth. The road straightened out. I slowed us down. We saw a black car in the distance, but when we caught up, it was an ox. Loops of saliva were suspended from the animal's gums. In front of the ox, a small boy was occupied with pushing a stick through the gravel.

Shiloh said, “I wish I were that kid.”

Alice waved to the boy.

“What could he be afraid of?” asked Shiloh.