PAGAN LOVES AND WILDING HEARTS

15.  Rascal Gypsy Girl

        Now there was one young woman, Marie was her name, who would sachet around like a fickle gypsy princess, which I suppose is exactly what she was. She came from somewhere in Quebec and her thick French accent and the way she had to stop and search her mind for English words lit a fire of curiosity in my heart for the culture she came from which was so different from ours—and yet not so different at all since she was so easily one of us... Marie always wore exciting things—extraordinary perfumes... a sash on her narrow waist or around her forehead... flouncy skirts that clung perfectly to her sensuous figure when she stood still and flared in every direction when she floated and bounced along the paths. She was petite, no more than a hundred pounds; and musical, she sang funky French ballads and love-songs and played the guitar. And she was wowie zowie sexual. She was often seen with this or that exceptionally lucky brother, and he with an attitude that revealed he was walking on air, and she strolling beside him like a doe transformed into a maiden, like an angel earth-bound. Her eyes were gay, spirited, intelligent, teasing.

        Then for awhile Marie was most usually seen with one particular brother—and for the life of me I cannot remember who he was or anything about him! Isn’t that extraordinary? He was well-known and well-thought of; I remember that... And I know I knew him pretty good, too. But I just cannot remember anything more than that about him! So I just watched beautiful Marie from afar, admired her with a sheathed passion. But there came a time when I started seeing her alone.  The guy was not hanging out with her. She told me they had split up; she belonged to herself again. She laughed. And somehow, she ended up in my teepee that night, and at my campfire, and in my bed. That memory is painted with oils on the walls of my mind. Everything about it defies literal description. I remember she wore a rare pair of tight denims that day. I remember unbuttoning them, unzipping them; I remember the way she lifted her ass up off the bed so I could pull them down from her ankles. I remember the wild passion in the night. I remember her French words in my ear.

        I would love to think that Marie and I made love on those few occasions when we tasted the depths of each other’s souls. But it didn’t last long—and it didn’t mean much. It was fun. It was exciting. We are all soulmates on that special psychedelic dimension, where love is eternal…

        She was delicious. But, she had other male friends whose company she preferred to mine, and she didn’t stay with any of them long either. She was a little heartbreaker, is what she was… So I hardly feel it would be fair to describe what we did as “making love”. But it was nice. Just the memory of the two or three times we were together is quite sufficient to put a smile on my face today, nineteen years later…

        Well, now comes the bittersweet funny/unfunny part. Marie had a sister named Lucy who was also pretty nice. They both roamed around the land from time to time. Now, one day, somehow I managed to get both of them over to my teepee at the same time. I have to admit I was hoping to orchestrate another three-way love-feast. Being blood-sisters as they were I thought I might have a real unique experience on my hands. Things were going along pretty good and it looked like the extravaganza was going to come off with whistles and bells. In fact their clothes were already off and we were making out like bandits— when who should walk in and sit down but Toni Buddha, the King of Putz.

        Toni figured this looked like the kind of party where he should be naturally welcome. Well, Marie and Lucy both knew Toni Buddha about as well as the sea knows the shore and they  weren’t seeing anything they hadn’t seen before. I’m not saying that what Toni Buddha had to offer wouldn’t tickle their funny bones—especially in the mood they were in—and I would willingly but reluctantly have expanded the party to include him if there was absolutely no way to avoid it. I mean his presence at this feast was NOT my idea of an IMPROVEMENT.  But I could have adapted to the damn situation. It was Marie and Lucy who developed other plans. They grabbed their clothes and dissolved into the night leaving me and Buddha alone together with smoke coming out our ears. Perplexed.

        AND IT WAS ALL BUDDHA’S FAULT! THE DIRTY RAT!

        So, over the next week or two whenever I saw the two sisters I tried to choreograph a repeat performance in my nest. Of course, they were totally wise to what I had on my mind now, and apparently they had discussed it among themselves and decided it wasn’t for them after all.

        So, no matter how I tried I couldn’t make this feast I’d been dreaming about come real.

        So it wasn’t long before I began looking at Marie in a different light. I was thinking I liked her like the moon and the stars and I set her amidst them in my heart. The thing with Lucy had just been a fling for fun, something I thought we would all get a lot out of. I was already putting it out of my mind. But I wanted Marie in my mind and my heart.

        When we had talked she had told me she wanted to go to the southwestern states for the winter, somewhere warm. I offered to take her there. She said she’d think about it. I wanted her to come away with me before she got any better offers from someone else, like from one of the brothers whom she obviously cared for more. I thought after she lived with me awhile she would grow to like me very much. It was a worthy gamble. Even if that didn’t happen, at least we would have a wonderful trip for as long as it lasted, maybe all winter. So I wanted to hurry her along in her decision-making. I told her I was leaving in a week; she could come along if she liked. It was up to her but she should make up her mind fast. When a week passed and she still hadn’t decided I postponed my departure another week, giving her a little more time to think about it. The mid-September weather was still hot. I didn’t really care whether I left or not. It was all just a gambit to win Marie.

        But apparently I was beginning to irk her… And instead of going with me on a love cruise she was developing plans to kick me in the shins. I was of course lost in the rapture of my expectations and I did not see it coming at all.

        Marie was in the habit of taking Demetrious for a walk whenever she liked. I liked because that gave her reason to come visit—both to get the dog and to bring him back. Also she loved to play my Martin-Sigma guitar, the best steel string acoustic on the land. Made of Indian Rosewood, with Earnie Ball strings. Marie came by early one morning and asked if she could borrow my guitar and take Demetrious for a walk. I got a hard-on just looking at her...

        “Sure thing, Mariel Help yourself. You know where the guitar is!”

        So she got the guitar out of the hardshell Martin case and called Demetrious and and off they went.

        “I wheel be bak in twooo hourrs!” she called out musically.

        I could hardly wait.

        I prepared a real great breakfast and set it beside the campfire to keep it warm. There was a good chance she would be back in minutes instead of two hours. Maybe in only one hour. Two hours passed. Then three. I ate the breakfast and took a walk down to the river. No one had seen Marie or Demetrious for awhile. I returned to my teepee to see if they had shown up while I was gone. Nope. I walked around to some of the other houses where I thought it was possible she might be—she was such a social creature—she could be anywhere. I checked Kurt’s digs—she wasn’t there, I walked past Tom Hennig’s. I didn’t see her. I returned to my teepee again. Empty. I laid on my bed and waited. An anxious feeling started to creep up on me.

        An hour later I was up again, walking around looking for her.  This time I got lucky. Someone had seen her on the highway walking towards the border with my guitar and Demetrious.

        I hurried to my Apache and whipped it down the rut road to the store. People said they’d seen my St Bernard running loose just a short time before. I found him at a house near the border station, and put him in the truck. A sister told me she’d seen Marie walking to the station an hour ago. Yes, she had a guitar with her. Apparently the border guards refused to allow Marie to take Demetrious across the border without papers so she had let him go. I rushed to the station and asked the guard if a Canadian girl with a guitar had walked through a short time before. He said she had come through—but he wouldn’t let me through until I told him what it was all about. When I told him she had taken my expensive guitar and I had to follow her and get it back, he decided the situation was too potentially volatile and he wouldn’t let me through. In a state of consternation I drove thirty miles to the Derby Line border crossing and told the guard I was just going across to have a beer in a bar and he let me through. I sped along the highways I figured she’d most likely take to arrive in her home town of Granby. Marie was a hitchhiker so I stood a small chance of seeing her. Very small. As pretty as she was, she probably never waited thirty seconds between rides.

        I never saw Marie of my Sigma-Martin guitar ever again. She avoided EPP for at least a month. I know she figured I would be gone soon, for the winter and she’d be safe then. Or maybe she left EPP never to return. Maybe she went to Guatemala and lives there on a coffee plantation. Who knows? More likely she lives on a pot plantation or inside a hash factory.

        She taught me the lesson I deserved. And she deserved that guitar, too. I don’t even care about the guitar. I’d just like to see her again…

***

        Thanks to the pot in particular my godawful headache had become a thing of the past; so it is understandable how grateful I felt towards the Hennigs. One morning I watched Linda Hennig wrestle a stubborn nanny goat into a milking stand. She told me the goat always tried to knock over the bucket and spill the milk. Could an animal be so premeditated I wondered? One look at the creature’s ornery face told me Linda was right -- that animal was determined to give her trouble and knew exactly what it was doing! But Linda didn’t take any bullshit; she just muscled the stiff legged brat into line. The goat weighed about as much as she did. You had to admire Linda. She was another mother who had born her children right there in the bed of her hippy home. Tom told me he had intended to deliver their first baby himself but an unfortunate circumstance developed that made that impossible—the poor green beret had passed out just as the baby was starting to come into the world and so Linda had to finish the job herself. He marveled at her strength as he spoke of that night—and I marveled when I heard his story. Linda, downstairs cooking, just laughed at us silly men—the weaker sex as far as she had proven many times; and one of those points I for one would never care to argue.

        The strength of these alternative culture women caused my heart to rise into my throat many times; their beauty was increased that much, restored, reclaimed—the Goddess of antiquity reborn, the Earth Mother, what noble friends they were to their men, to their children, to each other, to me. Yes, my heart veritably rushed with emotions when I observed their exquisiteness. I wished with all my heart that I had one of those sisters to live with me through the coming winter, to share my life and give me children.

        Tom wasn’t an active alcoholic in those days. He was a hard worker, a good provider. But when he did partake of alcohol it returned Tom to face a monster that still crept through jungles and wanted to kill him. I was with him in his car once when he was drunk. I thought we were dead. He wouldn’t let me out and he was all over the road. He was on the wrong side of the road. He was passing on blind curves at high speed.   After that I didn’t want to be near Tom when he was drunk. No way.

        But I didn’t realize how bad things could get until the night he and Denny Bertelson got into a ruckus over a teasy girl that Denny had been chasing around with a baseball bat. Tom had it in his mind he could be a little gentler with her and more successful in the “wild thing” department. But Denny wasn’t finished trying and they were both drunk so they were determined to fight to the death over who got to do what with her. They were both armed and running through the trees taking shots at each other.

        Robin came into my teepee and sat beside my fire looking pretty worried.

        “Well, this is it. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. I’ve been trying to talk sense to them but they’ve gone and done it now. I don’t think it’s going to be over with until one of them is dead or badly hurt.”

        I sat on my bed listening to his words. He knew those two wildmen better than I did. The shots rang out from different areas. We heard some distant yelling but couldn’t make out the words. He gulped down some of the tea I had set before him, and thanked me and then he said he was going out to try to talk to them again. I urged him to be careful. He rose and left. Shots continued sporadically.

        Fifteen minutes later Tom came running into my teepee with his big pistol waving. He was trying to shove the gun into my hands with the words,

        “—Here. Take this. I’m afraid I’ll be sorry otherwise. I had him right in my sights. I could have killed him. I could have—but I didn’t.   Here! Take this!”

        I told him I didn’t want the pistol around me, that I hate guns, that what he was doing was crazy. I told him to please take his pistol with him, to go throw it in the river. He threw the pistol down on my bed and ran out. I picked it up with two fingers and carried it a small distance away and buried it under a pile of thick autumn leaves. Mainly I was hoping he was too drunk to remember where he had left it in case he changed his mind and wanted to get it back and go after Denny again. One less gun might make everyone on the land feel considerably safer.

        The following day the whole thing had blown over. Everyone was drying out and feeling contrite. Tom came over and I returned his gun. It was a large caliber and well oiled.

        The incident set my mind to leaving EPP. I was imagining the state of minds that could exist in that place when temperatures dropped to twenty below zero and stayed there for months without change. I was imagining what it must be like to be stuck there then, the roads blocked with snow. It seemed to me if I was going to leave it would be better to go while the weather was still warm. It was already October.

        I packed everything into the Apache and took a last look around at this wonderful land that I had learned to both love and fear with equal intensity. The teazy young woman who had caused the fracus the previous day walked up to me. Her name was Mindy. She told me she had heard I was driving to the southwest. I told her that was true. She asked if she could come along. I thought it might be a boon to the land if I removed her; she had made trouble more than once. I could use the company on the long drive. I told her she could come if she could leave within five minutes. I figured if I gave her any longer than that she had the potential to turn our departure into a real bomb.

        While she ran to pick up a few things I walked over to the Hennig home. Tom wasn’t there but the kids were running around downstairs. I found Linda upstairs in their bedroom. I went up and sat beside her and told her I was taking the trouble-making Mindy woman with me when I left and asked her if she thought that was a good idea.

        She looked at me, there was no laughter in her now, she was dead serious and her beautiful hazel eyes were wet and and they burned into my soul. She replied,

        “Take her. Pan. Get her out of here. Do it now. If you don’t, I’m afraid I might kill her”.        

        We didn’t say goodbye to anyone as we rolled out of the park.