The Last American Man (30 page)

Sounded good so far.

Still, Eustace spent an hour explaining to Shannon what he could expect at Turtle Island. It was a lucid and patently honest
speech.

“I’m not a normal person, Shannon,” I heard him say. “Many people find that I’m not easy to get along with or work for. My
expectations are high, and I don’t give my workers much praise. People sometimes come here thinking they already have a lot
of valuable skills to offer, but I’m rarely impressed. If you come, you’ll be expected to work. Turtle Island is not a school.
There are no classes here. This is not a survivor’s course. I’m not going to take you in the woods for a certain number of
hours a day and teach you an organized program of wilderness skills. If that’s the kind of experience you want, please don’t
come here. There are plenty of places where you can find that, places that will put your needs and desires first. Outward
Bound is good for that, and so is the National Outdoor Leadership School. You pay them; they’ll teach you. I am not about
that. I’ll never put your needs or desires first, Shannon. The needs of this farm always come first. A lot of the chores I’ll
give you are repetitive and boring, and you’ll probably feel you’re not learning anything. But I can promise that if you stay
with the apprenticeship program for at least two years, and if you do what I say, you’ll acquire the hard skills that will
give you a degree of self-sufficiency almost unknown in our culture. If I see that you’re willing to learn and able to work,
I’ll devote more time to you individually as the months go by. But it will all come very slowly, and I’ll always maintain
my authority over you.

“I’m telling you this because I’m tired. Tired of having people come here with preconceptions that are different from what
I’ve just explained to you and then leave in disappointment. I don’t have time for that, so I’m trying to make myself extremely
clear. I’ll demand more of you than you’ve ever had demanded of yourself. And if you aren’t ready to work hard and to do exactly
what I say, then please stay home.”

Shannon Nunn said, “I understand. I want to be there.”

Shannon showed up a month after this conversation, ready to work. He was more excited, he said, than he’d ever been about
anything. He was a young man seeking spiritual wholeness in the woods, and he believed he had found his teacher. He was looking,
he said, “to drink of that water that—once you find it—you will never thirst again.”

Seven days later, he packed up his bags and left Turtle Island, deeply angry, hurt, and disappointed.

“I went there,” Shannon told me over a year later, “because I thought I understood the deal. Eustace promised me that if I
worked for him, he’d teach me how to live off the land. I thought he would be teaching me survival skills, you know? Like
hunting and gathering. Like how to build a shelter in the wilderness and how to make fire—all the stuff he knows. I’d invested
a lot of time and energy to go to Turtle Island. It was scary, because I’d left everything—my home,my family,my school—to
go there and be taught by him. But all he had me doing was mindless menial labor! He didn’t teach me anything about living
off the land. He had me building fences and digging ditches. And I told him, ‘Man, I could be digging ditches back home and
getting paid for it. I don’t need this.’ ”

Shannon was so disappointed that within a week of his arrival, he went to Eustace to discuss his problems with the apprenticeship
program. Eustace heard the boy out. His response was: “If you don’t like it here, go.” And he walked away from the conversation.
This made Shannon furious to the point of tears. Wait a minute! Why was Eustace walking away from him? Couldn’t he see how
upset Shannon was? Couldn’t they talk about it? Work something out?

But Eustace had already talked and didn’t feel like talking anymore. He’d had this same conversation again and again with
many different Shannon Nunns over many years, and he had nothing more to say. Eustace walked away from the conversation because
he was tired and because he had to get back to work.

He sleeps only a few hours a night.

Sometimes he dreams about Guatemala, where he saw children who were adept with a machete by the age of three. Sometimes he
dreams about the orderly farms and quiet families of the Mennonites. Sometimes he dreams of dropping his agenda for saving
the human race and, as he wrote in his journal, “changing Turtle Island into a private ‘for me’ sanctuary to try to survive
the ridiculous nature of the world today.”

But then he dreams about his grandfather, who once wrote, “More enduring than skyscrapers, bridges, cathedrals, and other
material symbols of man’s achievement are the invisible monuments of wisdom, inspiration, and example erected in the hearts
and minds of men. As you throw the weight of your influence on the side of the good, the true and the beautiful, your life
will achieve an endless splendor.”

And he dreams about his father. He wonders how much more backbreaking success he’ll have to achieve before he earns one word
of praise from the old man.

And then he wakes up.

Every morning, he wakes up to the same thing, to a national crisis. An impotent nation reflexively ruining everything in its
path. He wonders whether there’s any hope of repairing this. He wonders why he’s thrown his life into the breach to save everybody
else’s life. Why he allows his sacred land to be overrun by clumsy fools who treat the place so roughly. He wonders how it
came to pass that, when all he ever wanted was to be nature’s lover, he feels he has become her pimp instead. He tries to
comprehend the difference between what he’s obligated to do with his life and what he’s allowed to do. If he could do only
what he truly wanted, he might sell off this whole heavy burden of Turtle Island and use the money to buy a broad parcel of
land somewhere in the middle of New Zealand. There, he could live in peace, all alone. Eustace loves New Zealand. What a spectacular
country! Free of every kind of poisonous creature, sparsely populated with honest and trustworthy people, clean and isolated.
To hell with America, Eustace thinks. Maybe he should drop out of the mountain man rat race and leave his countrymen to their
fate.

It’s a gorgeous fantasy, but Eustace wonders whether he’d have the resolve to act on it. Maybe when he dreams about moving
to New Zealand he’s like one of those urban stockbrokers who dream about cashing out and moving up to Vermont to open a hardware
store. Maybe, like the stockbrokers, he’ll never make the shift. Maybe, like them, he’s too invested in his lifestyle to ever
change.

“Maybe I’m too late with my message,” he says. “Maybe I’m too early. All I can say is that I think this country is suffering
through a mortal emergency. I think it’s a nightmare and that we’re doomed if we don’t change. And I don’t even know what
to suggest anymore. I’m tired of hearing myself talk.”

CHAPTER NINE

We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing!

—John Caldwell Calhoun, 1817

I
get drunk with Eustace Conway sometimes. It’s one of my favorite things to do with him. OK, it’s one of my favorite things
to do with almost anybody, but I particularly enjoy doing it with Eustace. Because there’s some measure of peace that the
alcohol brings to him—those famous sedative properties at work, I suppose—that tamps down the fires within. The booze helps
turn down his internal furnaces for a short while, which lets you stand close to him without getting singed by the flames
of his ambitions and blistered by the buckling heat of his worries and convictions and personal drive. With a little whiskey
in him, Eustace Conway cools out and becomes more fun, more light, more like . . . Judson Conway.

With a little whiskey, you can get Eustace to tell his best stories, and he’ll whoop in delight as he remembers them. He’ll
imitate any accent and spin the most outrageous yarns. He will laugh at my dumbest jokes. When Eustace Conway is drinking,
he’s likely to crack himself up by peppering his dialogue with distinctly un-Eustacian modern phrases he’s picked up over
the years, such as “Yadda-yadda-yadda,” or “You da bomb!” or “That’s a win-win situation,” or—my favorite—upon receiving a
compliment, “That’s why they pay me the big Benjamins!”

“So, I’m hiking around Glacier National Park one summer,” he’ll say, soon after the bottle has been opened, and I’ll smile
and lean forward, ready to listen. “I’m high up above the timberline, walking across a snowbelt. Nobody knows where I am,
and I’m not even on a trail; just a ridge of snow and ice as far as you can see, with steep drop-offs on either side. Of course,
I don’t have any decent equipment; I’m up there messing around. So I’m walking along, and suddenly I lose my footing. And
it’s so goddamn steep that I start sliding right down the slope, skating down the sheer ice on my back. Most people hiking
up there would’ve brought an ice ax, but I don’t have one, so I can’t stop my fall. All I can do is try to dig all my weight
down into my backpack, to slow myself, but it’s not working. I’m digging my heels into the ice, but that’s not working, either!
Then the snow and ice turn to gravel and loose rock, and I’m speeding
thumpa-thumpa-thumpa
across the boulders at top speed. I keep falling and falling, and I think,
I’m gonna die for real
this time!
and then—THUD. I slam to a halt. What the hell? I lift my head and realize I have just slammed into a dead mule. I swear to
God! This is a dead motherfucking mule! This is a freeze-dried, mummified carcass of a mule, and it’s what stopped my fall.
Slowly, I stand up and look out over the mule, and right there, on the other side of his body, is a sheer cliff, dropping
down about two thousand feet into the middle of Glacier National Park. I start laughing and laughing, almost hugging the mule.
Man, that dead mule is my hero. If I’d dropped off there, nobody would’ve even found my body! Not for a thousand years, until
some hikers came across it and then wrote a damn
National Geographic
article about me!”

A few more sips of whiskey, and Eustace will talk about Dorothy Hamilton, the black woman who came running out of the fast-food
restaurant in rural Georgia when the Long Riders rode by, flapping her apron and kissing the Conway boys and demanding to
talk into their tape recorder journal. She knew the Long Riders were riding all the way to California—she’d seen them on TV—and
she had a loud message for the West Coast: “
Helllloooo all you surfers out theah in California!”
Eustace keens away in his cabin, summoning up this woman’s joyful voice. “
This is a big hello from yo’ friend, Dorothy Hamilton, the girl in
the CHICKEN shop!!!”

One night, Eustace and I walked down the holler in the snow to visit his dear old Appalachian neighbors Will and Betty Jo
Hicks. Will and Eustace set to talking about some old “double-
burl
” shotgun Will used to own. I tried to eavesdrop, but realized, as I do on every visit to the Hickses that I can’t understand
one word in ten that Will Hicks drawls. He says “hit” for “it” and “far” for “fire” and “veehickle” for “car,” but I can’t
decipher much more than that. Between his missing teeth and his backcountry euphemisms and his molasses inflection, his speech
remains a mystery to me.

Back in Eustace’s cabin that night, over a bottle of whiskey, I complained, “I can’t make any sense of that damn Appalachian
accent. How can you communicate with Will? I guess I just need to study me that Appa-
language
a little closer.”

Eustace howled and said, “Woman! You just need to Appa-
listen
harder!”

“I don’t know, Eustace. I think it’s gonna take me an Appa-
long
time before I can understand the likes of Will Hicks.”

“Heck, no! That old country boy was just tryin’ to teach you an Appa-
lesson
!”

“I reckon we can discuss this Appa-
later
,” I said, giggling.

“You’re not Appa-
laughin’
at old Will Hicks, are you?” Eustace said.

By this time we were both Appa-
laughin’
our fool heads off. Eustace was busting up, and his big grin was gleaming in the firelight, and I loved him like this. I wished
to heaven I had ten more bottles of whiskey and as many hours to sit in this warm cabin and enjoy watching Eustace Conway
let go of his fierce agenda and Appa-
loosen
the hell up for once.

I said, “You can be so much fun to hang out with, Eustace. You should show people this part of yourself more often.”

“I know, I know. That’s what Patience used to tell me. She said the apprentices wouldn’t be afraid of me all the time if I’d
let them see my spontaneous and fun side. I’ve even considered trying to figure out how to do that. Maybe every morning before
we start work, I should institute a practice of having five free minutes of spontaneous fun.”

“
Five
minutes of spontaneous fun, Eustace? Exactly five minutes? Not four? Not six?”

“Argghhh . . .” He gripped his head and rocked back and forth. “I know, I know, I know . . . it’s crazy. See what it’s like
for me? See what it’s like inside my brain?”

“Hey, Eustace Conway,” I said, “life isn’t very easy, is it?”

He smiled gallantly and took another long swig of hooch. “I’ve never found it to be.”

There is still ambition in Eustace. He’s not finished yet. Back when he was really young, back when he first walked around
Turtle Island with his girlfriend Valarie, he pointed out, as though reading from a blueprint, what he would make of his domain.
Houses here, bridges there, a kitchen, a meadow, a pasture. And he has made it so. All over his land now, standing physical
and real, is the evidence of what Eustace had originally seen in his mind. The houses, the bridges, the kitchen— everything
is in place.

I remember standing with Eustace over a nearly cleared pasture on my first visit to Turtle Island. It was nothing but a field
of mud and stumps, but Eustace said, “Next time you come here, there’ll be a huge barn in the center of that pasture. Can’t
you see it? Can’t you picture all the grass growing up green and healthy and the horses standing so pretty, all around?” The
next time I went to Turtle Island, there was, as though by some enchantment, a big beautiful barn in the center of the pasture,
and the grass was growing up green and healthy, and the horses were standing so pretty, all around. Eustace walked me up a
hill to give me a better view of the place, and he looked around and said, “Someday there’ll be an orchard right here.”

And I know the man well enough to be certain there will be.

So, no, he’s not done with Turtle Island yet. He wants to build a library, and he’s looking to buy a sawmill so that he can
produce his own lumber. And then there’s his dream house, the place where he’ll live. Because after all this time—after more
than twenty years in the woods, after working himself numb to acquire a thousand acres of land, after building more than a
dozen structures on his property—Eustace still doesn’t have a home of his own. For seventeen years he lived in a teepee. For
two years he lived in the attic of a toolshed. And recently he’s taken to living in a small rustic cabin he calls the Guest
House—a fairly public place, where all the apprentices and guests gather twice a day for meals in the wintertime when the
outdoor kitchen is closed. For a man who claims to want, more than anything, isolation, he has never given himself a truly
private space on Turtle Island. Everybody else, from the hogs to the apprentices to the tools to the books,must be housed
first.

But there is a home he has been designing in his mind for decades. And therefore you can be sure that it will exist someday.
He made the first drawings of it when he was in Alaska, stranded on an island for two days, waiting for the rough seas to
subside enough so that he could kayak safely back to the mainland. And when I asked him one afternoon if he could describe
it for me in detail, he said, “Why, yes.”

“The fundamental philosophy of my dream house,” he began, “is similar to my feeling about my horses—you go beyond the necessary
because you have a love for the aesthetic. This house is a bit showy, but I’m not going to sacrifice quality for anything.
If I want slate shingles, I’m going to have slate shingles. Also beveled glass, copper trim, hand-forged ironwork—anything
I want. The house will be built with large wooden timbers, and I’ve already picked out some from the woods around here. Big
logs and lots of stone, with everything overbuilt for strength and longevity.

“When I open the front door, the first thing I’ll see is a stone waterfall that goes up over thirty feet, with a stone pool
at the bottom of it. The waterfall is powered by solar electricity, but also heated, so it contributes to the heating of the
house. There will be a stone or tile floor, something that feels good to the eye and feet. The main room looks straight up
to a cathedral ceiling over forty feet tall. At the back of the room will be a big sunken fire pit, made of stone, with stone
benches built into it. I’ll make fires in there, and my friends can come over on cold winter nights and warm their bodies
and backs and butts on those warm stones. To the left of the great room is a door leading to my workshop, twenty feet by twenty.
The exterior wall is really just two massive doors on five-foot-long iron hinges that swing out wide and open into the outdoors,
so when I’m working in my shop during the summer, I’ll have the air and sun and birds singing.

“Next to the great room are two glass rooms. One is a greenhouse, so I’ll can have a plethora of fresh greens and vegetables
all year. The other is a dining room, simple and perfect. There’s a place for everything, just like on a ship. A big wooden
table and benches and a wraparound couch. And windows everywhere so that I can look down into the valley,where I’ll see the
barn, the pastures, and the garden. Behind the entrance to the dining room is a door leading to the kitchen. Marble countertops,
handmade cabinets with antler handles, open shelving, wood-burning stove—but also a gas range. Sinks with running cold and
hot water, all powered by solar, and all kinds of handmade this and hand-forged that and cast-iron cooking ware. And there’s
another door leading to an outside kitchen, where I can cook and eat in the summertime, with a sheltered deck and a table
and outdoor sinks with running water and shelves and stoves, so that I don’t have to keep going inside all the time for supplies.
The deck looks out over a beautiful drop-off in the ravine, and there’ll probably be propane lighting out there.

“Upstairs are two small loft bedrooms and—this can be seen from the great room—a balcony opening out from the master bedroom.
The master bedroom is the size of the workshop below, but it won’t be all cluttered. Just open space, clean and beautiful.
Down the hall from the master bedroom is a composting toilet and a sauna and the loft bedrooms. There’s also an outdoor sleeping
porch with a bed on it, but if I have to sleep indoors, there’s a king-size bed with a skylight over it so that I can look
at the stars all night. And, of course, there will be huge walk-in closets.

“There will be art everywhere in my home. Over the balconies will be hanging Navajo rugs. It’ll be a little like that Santa
Fe style everyone likes so much these days, but full of real and valuable art—not the art-i-fakes people collect because they
don’t know better. This home will have lots of art, lots of light, lots of space, peaceful, safe, underground on three sides,
useful and beautiful. I’m telling you,
Architectural Digest
would love to get its hands on this place. And I know I could build it myself, but I won’t even break ground for it until
I have a wife, because I will be
damned
if I’m gonna build this house without the right woman beside me.”

He stopped talking. Sat back and smiled.

I myself was unable to speak.

It wasn’t that I was wondering where the hell Eustace had ever picked up a copy of
Architectural Digest
. It wasn’t that I was shocked that Eustace, who has preached for decades about how little we need in the way of material
surroundings to live happily, had just described his desire to build a rustic mansion suitable to the aesthetic standards
of a retired millionaire oilman. It wasn’t that I was contemplating how much Eustace suddenly sounded to me like Thomas Jefferson—a
civic-minded but solitary idealist, momentarily letting go of his obligations to the Republic in order to lose himself in
the decadent reverie of designing the perfect home away from society. It wasn’t even that I was wondering where those thirteen
kids Eustace keeps planning to sire are going to sleep in a house that has only two spare bedrooms. I could handle all that.
Didn’t faze me one bit.

My shock was much more basic.

It was merely that, despite all the surprising twists of character I’d come to expect over the years from this most complex
and modern of mountain men, I still could not
believe
I had just heard Eustace Conway utter the phrase “huge walk-in closets.”