The Totem 1979 (7 page)

“Yes, and Brook Farm went to bust, and so did this,” Parsons said.

“But what’s so wrong to talk about it?”

“Look, you didn’t come here just to see the difference. You came here to start that trouble once again.”

Dunlap didn’t understand.

“It’s common knowledge how the town put pressure on them,” Parsons said. “How the freaks came through here in their long hair and their costumes, dressed as Superman and God knows what all, turning kids to dope, standing on the corner, howling, blowing kisses. How the town refused to tolerate them, wouldn’t sell them food or clothing or supplies, wouldn’t even let them in the city limits, tried to find a way to get them off that land. How one rancher had his boy run off and went up there to get him, went a little crazy, pulled a gun and shot a guy. There’s a lot of memory yet in town about that. There’s a lot of feeling. I don’t want you going around and making people ugly once again. Either that or guilty. I don’t want you writing so this town looks like the nation’s asshole. We had lots of that before. Writers coming in and making trouble, sympathizing with those freaks. You tell me how things have changed. Well, one thing hasn’t. Reporters like an underdog, and the way the town reacted to those freaks, there wasn’t any question who the reporters sided with. My guess is you’ll be doing just the same.”

“But really I’m not here for that,” Dunlap said. “I just want to see the difference.”

“Will you mention what went on back then? How the town reacted?”

“Sure. I guess so. That’s a part of how things changed as well.”

Parsons shrugged. “All right, then, there you have it.”

And they looked at one another, and they waited.

The buzzer sounded on the intercom. Parsons touched a button.

“Don’t forget you chair a council meeting in an hour,” a woman’s voice said.

“Thank you.”

Parsons took his hand off the intercom, leaning back.

Christ, Dunlap thought. He isn’t just the newspaper’s owner and the editor and maybe owner of a half a dozen other places too. He’s the goddamned mayor. Dunlap tried to think of how to smooth things. “Look,” he told him. “You know just as well as I, there are two sides to a story. Back in nineteen seventy, everything was polarized. The straights and the longhairs. The hawks and the doves. One group acted one way, and the other did the opposite. The thing to do is talk to people in the town and get their version of the story, then to talk to people in the commune and get their version too.”

Parsons shrugged. “There’s no one out there now.”

“What?” Dunlap straightened in surprise. “Nobody told me.”

“Maybe two or three are still there. If they are, it’s news to me.”

Dunlap stared at him.

“Of course, there are ways to track the others down,” Parsons said. “The names are all on file. If you’ve got the time.”

Dunlap went on staring at him.

“Look, I’ll tell you what,” Parsons said. “You may have gathered from that message that I don’t just run this paper. I’m on the town council. If I wanted, I could make things tough for you, see that people didn’t talk to you, deny you access to the paper’s files, other things.”

It was the “other things” that Dunlap didn’t like the sound of.

“But I won’t. For one thing, that would show up in your story too. For another, you’d just work a little harder, and you’d get your story anyhow. All the same, if I wanted, I could make things tough. Now the point is, I don’t want you thinking I’m against you. The fact is that I’m not. In your place, I’d act the same as you. What I do want is a simple understanding. Anything you need is yours. Ask and I’ll arrange it. You go out and do your story. Then you come back to this office, and we talk. I want the chance to make this town look good to you. These people here are fine. I’m anxious that they don’t get hurt.”

Dunlap squinted.

“No, I’m not afraid of business being hurt,” Parsons said. “People out there don’t stop buying cattle just because a story makes a town look bad. What I said was true. I just don’t want these people hurt.”

Dunlap took a breath. “Fair enough.”

“What do you need?”

“Well, for starters, let me in your paper’s morgue. Then I’d like to see the records the police kept.”

“That’s no problem. What else?”

“Courthouse records. Trials and transcripts.”

“That’s no problem either.”

“Then I’d like to talk to people in the town. I’ll go out to the commune, too, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll see that someone goes out with you.”

Dunlap shrugged. “That’s all I can think of for now.”

“Well, you’d best get at it then. Just remember. Anything you need.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get back to you.”

“I know you will.” And Parsons stared at him as Dunlap stood to leave. One thing now was certain, Dunlap thought. This was going to be a whole lot harder than he’d expected.

Chapter Twelve.

Ken Kesey was the cause of it. The Merry Pranksters and that bus. That was back in 1964. Kesey had already finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion. With his money, he had bought some land near Palo Alto, California, gathered freaks around him, and started on a trip. That was back when LSD was legal, and the trip of course was only in his mind. Then the trip was real. He had bought a bus, had sprayed it every color of the rainbow, and then dressing like a comic strip, he had shooed his freaks on board and started for New York. On the Road a decade later, Neal Cassidy as driver, that same Cassidy who’d been with Kerouac. They had ballyhooed across the country, music blaring out of speakers on the top, channeled in upon itself so that it echoed and then echoed yet again, police cars stopping them while Pranksters jumped down-Day-Glo-colored costumes, Captain Marvel, Mandrake the Magician-setting up their movie cameras. “Yes, sir! Yes, sir! What’s the trouble? Speak right toward this microphone.” Well, the policemen didn’t stay long, and the Pranksters got few traffic tickets, roaring on across the country, popping acid, blaring music, acting out the movie of their lives. They reached New York and headed back, and by now they were noticed, not just by the strangers they were passing but the press as well. There were numerous stories about their odyssey, acid rock and Day-Glo paint, so that when they got back to the commune, others of their kind were waiting for them, and the movie went on, only larger, more extreme. From the commune, they went to the cities, starting what they called their acid tests, light shows, flashing pictures, music coming from each corner of a hall they rented, speakers blaring, all matched with the flashing in their minds from all those Kool-Aid pitchers spiked with acid. Then Kesey was arrested for possession, not of acid but of marijuana. That took place in 1965. In 1966 he was arrested yet again, same charge, but convicted by now on the first offense and out while sentence was appealed, he had fled his second trial, heading south toward Mexico. Unlawful flight. Rumors where he was. Then back in California where he was arrested once again. In 1967 he was serving time. That was how the acid culture got its start, from Kesey and his life style bigger than his books.

But there were other ways, those who said that Kesey had been wrong, that with a good thing going he’d been foolish to be so in sight. Better to do it on the sly, keep things quiet, keep them truly out of sight. Like the commune, some were saying. That had been a good idea. The trouble was that Kesey ventured out. He had been his own undoing. Better find a place where no one went, stay there, do your thing. Well, they did it, and where they chose to do it was near Potter’s Field, Wyoming. All it took was one rich kid whose parents had both died. He’d been with Kesey. He had seen the trouble that was coming, and he’d split. Twenty-one, he had complete control of all the money he’d inherited. He’d found a spot where no one ever went, fifty acres of thick timber in the mountains far across the valley from the town. He had bought it, paid the taxes for ten years, set up buildings, and moved in. It wasn’t just a place for freaking out. He had notions of a kind of ideal way of life. Those who marched against the Vietnam war but felt they weren’t accomplishing anything, those who tried to change society from within the system but found that the politicians they worked for betrayed them, these and others like them he would welcome to his arms. The new republic. Free love, free food, and free spirit. Everything was on his tab. Not an orgy, not the kind of free love everyone was thinking of. But something else. Simple freedom that permitted love, love in any form, physical, emotional, as long as no one would be harmed, the kind of freedom those who were attracted to him hadn’t seen before. First there were the freaks, imitation Pranksters, some who had indeed been Pranksters. Then there were the drop-outs, those who couldn’t stand things anymore, who couldn’t even bear to watch the television news. Queers and junkies, cowards, troublemakers, traitors and more, that was how the straight world saw them, but in Quiller’s fifty acres, they were just themselves. Quiller, twenty-one and rich and leader of his version of a country. Photographs of him were not at all what a conservative would expect. No long hair and beard and ragged jeans. No beads, guru shirts, or Captain Marvel costume. Quiller looked just as straight as those who spoke against him. Short hair reminiscent of the fifties, sideburns even with the middle of his ears, fair-skinned to begin with so his clean face looked like it was always shaved. He wore custom-tailored shirts and designer slacks and hand-sewn patent-leather shoes. Tall and thin. No, that didn’t quite describe him. Tall was far too relative. He stood six-foot-eight, a star in basketball in college, but that still did not convey his seeming height. Think of what he weighed. One hundred and sixty, sometimes less, just sinew, bone, and muscle, running ten miles in the morning and another ten at night. He looked as if someone had put him on a rack and stretched him, long legs, long arms, neck and body, stark thin hips and chest and waist. His face was in proportion, high and narrow, slight jaw, small lips, thin nose. Mostly what you noticed were his eyes, though. Even in the photographs. Bright and clear and gleaming, almost piercing. In color photos, they were blue.

Some who were against him said his eyes were bright like that because of all the speed and acid he was popping. Others, more inclined toward him, maintained that they were bright like that because he was so goddamned smart, his I.Q. close to genius, up there near one hundred and eighty.

All that Dunlap had already checked on, going through old Newsworld files back in New York at his office. There were photographs of Quiller talking to reporters, of the conference that he had called, using all the power of his wealth, to tell them what he planned. Reporters had been glad to come, promised champagne, pheasant under glass, and caviar, eager too to find another Kesey. They had written many stories based on Kesey. Now they hoped to write a lot more like them based on Quiller, disappointed when they saw how straight he seemed. Quiller had them writing soon enough, however. First he told them how disgusted he was that he couldn’t get attention without bribing them to come, how he hoped the caviar would choke them and remind them of the sickness in the country. He explained his views about the nation, and he told them to go out and spread the word. They, of course, refused. Some were standing up to leave. But he had something yet in store for them. “The Exodus,” he called it. Two months further on, July 4, Independence Day, he would free his people from their bondage. Starting out from San Francisco, he would lead a caravan of misfits, malcontents, and dispossessed from City Hall at nine a.m. and take them to the promised land. He told reporters of the fifty acres, told them what he planned to do there, told them of the kind of ideal life he hoped to lead. Because he couldn’t change the nature of the world, he would turn his back on it and make his own. No hate, no wars, no repression. Only peace and mutual respect and harmony. He invited all the reporters in the room to join him. Mostly, though, he let them in on what amounted to a newsman’s holiday. Two months from now, they’d have stories all right, more than they could handle, visions of those photogenic hippies, traffic jams and confrontations, Day-Glo buses, vans and motorcycles, God knows what all, heading down the road. Local color and events. That was it: events. This had the feel of something major. Quiller got what he had wanted. They went out and spread the word.

It was a media-created happening. Later, many would maintain that nothing would have taken place if reporters had been silent. But the media said that it would happen, and of course it did. Five thousand freaks of all descriptions, half as many vehicles. It wasn’t just a traffic jam. It amounted almost to a riot, police attacking the freaks, claiming the assembly was unlawful, dragging hippies off. Quiller put a stop to that. He’d used his money there as well, buying various permits from officials.

And they started away, Quiller at the lead in a bright red classic 1959 Corvette, heading across the country. They went through Nevada and then Utah, others joining in along the way, a five-mile caravan of cars and trucks and bikes and buses, straight or twisted, some plain, others Day-Gloed, orange and green and purple, every color you could think of. It was something else, they said. It was also Quiller’s last cooperation with reporters. He had broken his first rule-don’t let people know what you’re doing. He’d been forced to. Without newsmen, he had no publicity. But now he had no need for them, and he ignored them all along the way. He reached Wyoming, moving close to home. He crossed the rangeland, worked up through the mountains, crossed more rangeland, then more mountains. Then he reached the valley, coming through the western pass, never getting close to town, simply heading north within the valley until he reached the loggers’ road and going up, and that was where the story ended. No reporter ever saw the compound. Lord knows, many tried. Quiller, though, was adamant. Echoing a famous Kesey slogan that a person’s either on or off the bus, he said that newsmen too were free to join. The catch was, they would have to stay. ‘You’re either in or out of the compound. There’s no in-between.” Many newsmen tried to fake it, but he wouldn’t have them. He wouldn’t accept a lot of freaks who’d come with him as well. He wanted only those who sensed a mission. Those who wanted nothing but parties he ordered to leave. There were thugs he had hired who took care of forcing them to leave and many of the chosen who took care of forcing them as well. At last he had a thousand. Then he cut them down to half, and all the gates were closed.