PAGAN LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS

10. Down and Out

        Spring came with a rush of warm weather that vanished all the snow as though summer had replaced winter in the twinkling of an eye and spring had been skipped entirely.

        Optimism is born in such weather like the buds sprouting on the branches. There will be another life after all. The winter will not last forever after all. Rebirth is perennial. And I felt my blood rise like the sap in the trees. The emeralds in my pocket glowed in my mind; my hand deep in my pocket I turned the bottle round and round in my fingers and dreamed of my store, planned it.

        But the Creator of all circumstances had other plans. Don’t ask me why because I don’t understand those things. I only know that when rivers change their beds there is no arguing with the hand of God.

        The grass was green in the park and people were gathered beside the antique locomotive taking off their shoes to twist their toes in the cool grass, another ritual of life renewed. There were backpacks in the park. Wanderers were on the move.

        I sat talking to three brothers who had come from the east coast.  They were telling me about a place in Vermont called Earth People’s Park, six hundred primitive forest acres on the Canadian border; a place where any hippy brother of sister could go and live the hippy dream—return to the Garden of Eden. I hadn’t heard of anything better—however I wasn’t interested in going to Vermont right away. The emeralds in my pocket were talking to me too. They were whispering that if I stuck around I could start a counter-culture jewelry store from scratch and it would grow and grow and grow and pretty soon I’d be wearing expensive clothes and driving a Bathtub Porche. But I stored away all the things the brothers told me about Earth People’s Park. It was good to know one’s alternatives.

        Parking my Metro was becoming a problem. I was getting tickets for sleeping in my rig! It was considered highly illegal to live in an old vehicle on the streets of Boulder. So, it seemed remarkable to me but some nights to avoid an expensive ticket I actually had to take my sleeping bag outside my warm Metro and sleep on the frozen ground hidden among trees and brush! Brrrrrrrrrrr! Those nights were COLD! There I was freezing all night long out in a snow field when I should have been safe and snug inside my truck. But the cops were getting real sinister. They must have been under orders to pressure all the vagabond vehicles to leave town. But, ohmygosh, sleeping in those snowfields was terrible.

        I managed to dig up a few other options none of which were always a sure thing. I slept once on the couch of a dormitory at the University and a couple nights on the kitchen table of a co-op apartment building.  One night while sleeping on the table some of the occupants came upon me, not knowing that another tenant had given me permission to be there and they treated me like I was a burglar, almost beating me up.

        The Metro was of course the best place for me to sleep and the most logical and whenever I had enough gas I simply drove a little ways outside town and had no trouble with police—but usually I had no gas and so the cops were a real scary nuisance pounding roughly on my door in the middle of the night the way they loved to do, getting me out in the freezing dark, bleary eyed and fumbly, and making me produce identification and answer stupid questions. So I searched for somewhere to park where sleeping in my truck wouldn’t be so obvious.

        I found a safe place on a residential street on top of the steepest hill in town and parked up there almost every day. It just meant an easy walk down and a hard walk up whenever I had to get to the truck.  No problem. I could use the exercise. The cops still didn’t like me parking there and they cruised by real slow sometimes looking for signs of movement inside and some of the residents didn’t like me being there either but there wasn’t as much they could do about it. How were they to know I wasn’t renting a room in one of the nearby houses? I attempted to slip in and out of my truck anonymously, quietly, like a cat.

        The townfolk in those houses didn’t like to think anyone might be sleeping in the weird old truck parked out in front of their homes.  Living in a vehicle wasn’t the way proper people lived. They didn’t want a situation like that around them. I suppose they worried that I might be a thief or a communist or a dope dealer or a prophylactic salesman or something. They didn’t want their children exposed to the horrors of America’s smarmy underside and the presence of gypsy wheels on their streets represented brazen encroachments too near their tender lives.

        That’s what I think was going on in their heads. It’s only fair to tell you that I am laying a case with these statements in an attempt to establish my theory as to what actually happened next.

        One day I returned to my truck to discover it was gone. I looked everywhere but it was a hard thing to misplace a big rig like that. I was about to notify the police that my vehicle had been stolen when a man came out of a house across the way and asked me if I were looking for a large step-van? When I answered that as a matter of fact I was he told me I would find it down at the bottom of the hill inside a house. With my heart in my throat I ran down the hill to find my Metro had already been towed away to an impound yard. Yes, horror of horrors, my huge truck had carreened down the steep hill, bounced over the curb and slammed through the wall of a family home while the residents were watching television.  No one had been hurt, thank God, but the amount of damage to the house would not be anything I could afford to repair. Needless to say.

        Is it possible to express how shook-up I was? I doubt it. So I’ll just have to skip most of the anguish and fingernail biting descriptions of the events of the next couple days other than the most essential.

        First off, I decided I wanted to try to keep out of the way of the police in the matter; kind of like wanting to take a shower under Niagara Falls without getting wet. So I telephoned them and said I was calling long distance from Denver and heard there was a problem with my truck running into a house and I asked them about it and told them I would be back in town in a few days to take care of it. That seemed to kind of succeed at stalling off the crisis and hopefully give me some time to work out a few details—like how to get my guitar and sleeping gear and rubies which were all inside the truck in the impound yard.

        So next I called up the yard and asked them about the situation. They said I would need to give them $200 before I could get the vehicle or even anything inside it. The Metro was a wreck beyond repair, so I didn’t need to get it out but my stuff was a different matter. I managed to talk the guy into accepting fifty dollars, all the money I had (my mother had just sent it to me) in return for allowing me to get out my personal things. I went and did that.

        The wrecker hated hippies. He wanted to fight me. Or maybe it was just because he was angry that anyone would be so dumb as to leave a big truck on a steep hill like that without setting the emergency brake and turning the front wheels into the curb. I don’t know but I counted myself lucky when I got away with all my stuff without losing any blood.

        Which brings me back to my premise; inasmuch as I am fairly sure I remember setting the brake and turning the wheels into the curb before I left the rig I have always thought that someone reached inside and deliberately sent the rig flying down the hill; probably someone who wanted me out of the area permanently. But at the same time I must also accept the terrible possibility that the fault was truly all my own; that I failed to do those things which are the logical things any competent driver must do if he is to be trusted with the operation of a vehicle.

        So I don’t know. And I didn’t know at the time either. And it wouldn’t have mattered at the time even if I had known for sure that the wreck hadn’t been my fault because no one would have believed me. So there was nothing for me to do but leave town. And as fast as possible.

        Only two more events were to occur before Boulder would no longer be blessed with my presence. And the two events are somewhat connected and interwoven into everything else.

        The first was that I met a beautiful young woman with long silky brown hair and I made love with her in her apartment and afterwards took out my emeralds and showed them to her.

        The second thing was that I required a place to sleep again and inasmuch as nights of early spring were still very cold and after shivering for hours on the frozen ground of the university I got up and walked to a dormitory where I attempted to spend the night on a couch—and I was awoken by two policemen who arrested me and took me to jail. I gave them a false name and told them I was passing through Boulder and had no intention of staying, explaining that I had arrived too late to find any place to sleep so I had tried sleeping in the dorm.  The cop told me if I would leave his town instantly he would let me go instantly.

        I left instantly, and far away out on the highway, a few days later, perhaps a thousand miles east of Boulder—I remembered leaving my glass vial of emeralds on the girl’s couch, the thin girl with the long brown hair, the passionate beauty with the succulent vagina, the angel with the soft voice and gentle eyes. How beautiful she would look clothed in nothing but those emeralds and gold, a gem in her belly, one hanging from each nipple, emerald earrings, an emerald diadem on her forehead, emerald beads woven into long strands of her hair, an emerald in her pierced nose. an emerald in her pierced clitoral flap, emerald rings on each finger and toe. She could shine in the seventh heaven...

        And in my dreams... in my dreams...