Tinker and Blue (12 page)

20

“Know what these hippie pads remind me of, Tinker? Those McDonald hamburger joints we were eating at all the way out here. Every one exactly the same. Same beaded curtains, same incense, same posters, same music blasting from the record player. Looks just like Peter?'s place and every other we've been in since we got here.”

Blue was lying on a mattress which was on the floor of the room he had just moved into with Karma. He stroked Barney lying on the floor beside him and studied the walls and ceiling. Tinker's eyes toured the room, as well. The walls were papered with posters celebrating rock music and criticizing war, posters of seaside sunsets complete with quotes from “Desiderata” or Kahlil Gibran, and psychedelic posters that gave Blue a headache. The posters occupied three walls but the fourth puzzled Blue. Karma had clearly begun blocking out a painting, using all of the 16-foot-wide, 12-foot-high plaster wall. Its early stages didn't make a lot of sense to him.

“Know what I think, Tink?” he said to his friend who had dropped in from the room next door. “I think we're at the beginning of a brand new story. ‘Once upon a time' time, to quote the other fellow. With a little luck we'll live happily ever after, old buddy.”

“Or wind up in jail, Blue. I've been thinking about the fact that the cops are looking for these people. I know Kathy and Karma wouldn't do anything wrong but who knows why Capricorn is on the run. What happens if we get caught with them?”

“I've been thinking about that, too, Tinker, and our best bet is the ‘dumb Canadians' routine. You know, we're just a couple of nice guys who fell in among thieves, to quote the other fella. One of the best things Farmer ever showed me was the weasel path. Farmer says that no matter what situation a guy gets in, even if it's a good one, he'd better figure out what he'll do if something goes wrong. Even a good situation might turn out to have a husband in it, he says. If a guy can't find a noble way out, then he better find a way to weasel out of it. That's what he calls his weasel path. It's a good idea, Tinker. Says he learned it in the war where it came in real handy while he was trying to stay alive.”

Tinker nodded.

“So how do you think you're going to like living like a married man?”

“It's awful real, Blue.”

“What's real is relative,” Peter? said, pushing the bead curtain aside, allowing Gerry and Nathan to enter the room ahead of him, then followed them carrying several newspapers. “So what awful reality awaits you, Tinker?”

“A job in a garage, I hope,” Tinker said.

“I don't know about you getting a job in a garage, Tinker, but it looks like there might be a job in the music business for you, Blue,” Peter? said flipping through the papers. “The
Herald
called you ‘a cacophony of horrid sounds and meaningless words,' but that's the mainstream papers for you. The important point here, Blue, before you become upset, is that the paper bothered to mention your performance at all. People who don't trust this reviewer will want to hear you for themselves.
The Voice
is considerably more insightful.

Blue Anti-voice has developed a sound that, while many were snickering and laughing behind raised hands, attracted, not unlike Saint Francis of Assisi, an audience of animals. A German shepherd from off the street wandered in at the sound of the music and proceeded to affectionately maul the musician. Such omens should not be dismissed lightly.

“But I've saved the best for last. The
Subterranean
reviewer, a close personal friend, I might add, has written that

Blue Anti-voice has discovered a new dimension to music comparable to the discovery of the sub-atomic world in physics. Like quantum physics, that dimension's value and reality will be lost on most people, but its influences will affect our daily lives for eons to come.

“So is all this good or bad?” Blue wondered aloud.

“Good, Blue. Any note written about an artist is good, isn't that right, fellows?”

Gerry and Nathan agreed that they would consider killing to get that much press coverage from a single performance.

“How would you like to be on the cutting edge of a brand new sound,” Peter? asked suddenly. “I've been thinking about it all night. You've got something special, man. You just need some musicians and a manager, a manager that knows the city, and musicians that are as uncontaminated by success as yourself. So, presto! as the magician says, we've come to offer you both.”

Blue evaluated Peter?'s proposal, noting especially Peter?'s insight that Blue possessed something special. He could modestly blush at the observation, but not honestly deny it. He looked at the others. “What do you guys think?”

“I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I can play that bad,” Gerry confessed sadly.

“Sure we can,” Nathan said. “We'll just tune our instruments to Blue's voice then play it for real.”

“Can I be part of this?” Tinker asked.

Gerry, Nathan and Peter? looked at him, their faces filled with the bad news. “Sorry, Tinker, but we've heard you. You couldn't sing a bad note if you tried. But there are lots of garages in 'Frisco,” Peter? assured him. “What we need now is a name that will announce our arrival. Blue Anti-voice is too much of a portrayal of a single personality. We're a group now, a movement.”

“What did that guy in the
Herald
call me? That word....”

“Cacophony?”

“Right. I like the sound of that. Ca-co-phon-y! How about Blue Cacophony?”

“Perfect!” Peter? said with the others nodding agreement.

“What does cacophony mean, anyway?” Blue asked.

“You can look it up later,” Peter? replied. “What we need now is a place to practice.”

“A secret place,” Blue cautioned. “We don't want someone coming around and stealing our sound before we get it out there. In the meantime,” he said to his band members, “Don't quit your day job, to quote the other fellow, but on the other hand be ready to join me on the stage of Ryman Hall. We are on our way, gentlemen.”

—

“You know what the other fellow says, Tinker, love begins when she sinks into his arms and ends with her arms in the sink. Only trouble is, buddy, it's us with our arms in the sink.”

Blue was fussily trying to fish dishes from the sudsy water in the kitchen sink without getting his hands wet. Tinker was drying whatever cups and plates Blue caught in the hot, greasy pool.

The rules of the Human Rainbow Commune (San Francisco branch) were simple enough. Capricorn had convened a meeting of the population to welcome Tinker and Blue to the commune and to inform them of the rules. There was no mention of what Blue called “our expulsion from Colorado.”

Everyone contributed what they could financially, and each person was delegated a domestic chore each day; sweeping, scrubbing, shopping, laundry and whatever other jobs God had originally delegated to mothers to perform for their children. Tinker and Blue explained that the only household chore in which they were well-trained was hauling kindling and scuttles of coal from the shed in the back yard to the stove in the kitchen, a trade for which there was little demand at the centrally heated Human Rainbow Commune. They were now apprenticed to each other as this day's dish washers, tomorrow's grocery shoppers.

There were eleven people living in the three-story commune besides Tinker and Blue; Capricorn and Tulip, Karma and Kathy, and the rest were familiar faces with forgotten names from Colorado, but Blue missed one member from the Colorado location.

“Where's Cory?”

“Cory's gone political, man,” Capricorn replied. “After they arrested him on the mountain and he found out what happened while he was hiding up there ... that's his own word, hiding ... when he found out about the trial in Chicago, and about Bobby Seale gagged and chained to his chair right there in the courtroom, well, Cory lost it. Not much political news reached us in Colorado. That's how we wanted it, an unpolluted new beginning. The commune tried to have no interest in any of what was happening down here, especially the war and the president. So the story of the Chicago Seven, well, we heard there was a trial but didn't chase the details, not what happened to those people in the courtroom. Even if I did know it all, I don't think I would have told the rest, even Cory, although he has a cultural stake in what happened there.

“What we were trying to do there – what we are still trying to do here – is transcend cultures, creeds and politics. That doesn't mean that none of us have political views. We all do because how can a person not have opinions, but they are just that, opinions. None of us are bound to someone else's opinion. We are not a political movement because we are not on a power quest; we are on a spiritual quest. We recognize that violence is wrong. The path of non-violence is the one thing common to everyone in this commune. It's not a religion we have here because that in itself is a power quest. We welcome all religions that teach that violence to each other and the planet is wrong.

“But the path you choose doesn't automatically transform itself into your destiny. That's what Cory discovered, that he isn't ready to live separate from what is happening to his people. He thought he could make an individual choice for himself, but a week in police custody and an overdose of newspapers and television broadcasts about political America taught him more about himself than he learned during eighteen months on a mountain top. That's what he told Tulip.

“Spiritually, it's not up to us to judge Cory for going militant in his rage. Destinies unfold at their own pace and Cory's right now has led him to join a cell of the Panthers.”

“The Black Panthers?” Blue gasped. “You mean Cory's one of them now? When I heard what they did to that guy in Chicago it even made
me
mad. Reminded me of the story they tell back home about the strike at the coal mines when the police shot Bill Davis to death. Ever hear about that? It's a holiday we hold every year now for miners murdered by the police or the coal companies. Davis Day! Besides, most mine accidents are murders, you know, but you never hear of a coal company going to jail, just miners going to their graves. So we know where Cory's coming from, but the good news is he's still here and not in jail. Where?”

“I've run into him a few times, and last week he dropped in here to visit Tulip, but ideas are like continents, once they begin to drift apart an ocean opens up between them and it's hard to communicate across an ocean,” Capricorn explained.

“Well, I'm sorry Cory's gone but I'm glad he's doing something he believes has to be done. I guess there's something Tinker and me should tell you before you sign us up for this path you're talking about. We're Catholics and we're Liberals.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I'm not sure if the Catholic Church is non-violent or not. Tinker and I have been battered around by a few nuns in our day but who hasn't, and if the Pope tells us to go to war we have to go. And we were born Liberals, just like we were born Catholics. That's pretty well the way it works back home, you're either Catholic and Liberal or Tory and Protestant. There's exceptions, of course, but it generally breaks down that way and the Liberals really like it because Catholics have so many kids who grow up to vote like they're supposed to. So we belong to a church that's not afraid to throw a punch, as the other fellow says, and the Liberal Party, both of which we inherited from our fathers who would kick our arses all the way back to Cape Breton if we ever converted to something else, like becoming a Protestant or a Tory.”

“Or becoming a hippie living in a commune in San Francisco learning how not to fight,” Tinker added. “Okay, I understand this not fighting bit, but when is it all right to fight?”

“Never,” Capricorn replied. “We practise non-violence with people, animals and insects.”

“Yeah, I got that part when I was in Colorado. I think it's a great philosophy to have as long as nobody's bothering you, but what if somebody comes along and wants to steal your van? How do you stop him if you can't crack him in the jaw?”

Something like a smile threatened to twist Capricorn's serious mouth and he changed the subject. “I've been meaning to talk to you about the van, Tinker. It's been behaving badly since we got to the city and if you don't object, I'd like to make van maintenance one of your responsibilities.”

“That's vantastic, Tink,” Blue said. “Get it? Vantastic?”

21

Wondering what he had gotten himself into, Blue watched Karma blocking out the bare wall for her painting. When he asked what she planned to paint, she had replied that she was going to create a mural of her lives.

“Your lives?”

“Yes, in panels like a comic book page.”

“You don't mean lives like you were once Napoleon or anything like that, do you?”

“No, Blue, of course not!”

“Whew! For a minute there I thought you were talking about reincar—”

“I was never Napoleon. I have no feel for his time at all and that must be because I wasn't here at the time, don't you think?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Karma, for the love of Christ, hold her right there, girl! You're not serious about this?”

“I know what you mean. It used to scare me, too.”

“It doesn't scare me!” Blue snapped. “I read all about that Budoo stuff, where you come back as an ant or a carrot or something. All those lives might make a good religion for cats but I'll take my chances with good old Catholicism myself.”

“I'm surprised, Blue. It's such a good story I thought you'd like it, everybody being born over and over and over until each of us gets it right. That's the happiest ending I can imagine; everyone fated to fulfill themselves, and God just waiting for us to get there.”

“There are stories and there are stories, and some stories should be banned in Boston, as the other fellow says. Explain to me where we go between lives, if you please? Do we just slip out during a heart attack and hang around with the angels just waiting for some chick to get knocked up in the back seat of a Chev so we can come back? I don't think that's what God's got in mind, girl. Why would you want to believe that?”

“Because if we've chosen the lives we're living then there's a point to everything, isn't there? And God's not to blame for anything, we are. Capricorn has this theory about a spiritual evolution. Maybe it takes millions of years for a soul to grow up. That's exciting, don't you think? I decided to believe it instead of horrible stories about Heaven and hell, spiritual winners and losers. With reincarnation, we've all chosen our crosses so they can't really be crosses, can they? So they must be something we need.”

“Funny you should say that. We got this nun back home, eh....”

“Not Sister St. Farmer, I hope, Blue.”

“No, Mother St. Agnes. She was our grade six teacher and one time she told us that if everybody in the world could put the crosses they had to bear in one big pile in the middle of a field, and then each one of us was allowed to go through the pile and choose whatever cross we wanted to carry instead of our own, well, Mother St. Agnes said that once we got a good look at the crosses everybody else had to bear, that we would just pick up our own again and be grateful. You know how sometimes somebody says something to you and it just sticks there like something you already knew, well, this story was something like that.”

“So was my story,” Karma said. “It just felt so perfectly true that I can't imagine believing anything else.”

“I'll say this about dying in one place and getting born in another, Karma. I hope it's true, because if Tinker and I don't get some money together soon that may be the only way we'll ever see Cape Breton again.”

Karma pulled a chair to the wall, stood on it and began sketching in the upper left-hand corner. The shape that began to emerge had little recognizable reality for Blue, resembling an ugly mask more than any person Karma might have been in her previous lives. While she worked he wondered if she meant to be drawing what she was drawing or if she was just really bad at it.

Karma stepped down and back a few feet to study the lines on the wall. Blue got up off the mattress and started to tip-toe from the room in case she might ask him....

“What do you think?”

Blue froze in mid-stride, his back to the drawing, then turned slowly, looking thoughtful. “Hmmmmm,” he said, then repeated that profound observation again. “Well, it's—”

Karma covered his mouth with her hand.

“I'm not into violence, Blue, but if you tell me it's ‘interesting' I'll tear your tongue out.”

Her light-hearted warning slammed the lid shut on the only word Blue could come up with under this sudden pressure of needing to appreciate art. Without “interesting,” he was as helpless as a parent trying to guess what his three-year-old expects him to see in the picture she has drawn for him.

“I like it a lot better than Tulip's stuff, I'll tell you that. I have an idea of what you're drawing, but Tulip's....” The statement could only be finished with a baffled shake of his head, recalling the wildly painted canvases hanging on the walls of the Human Rainbow Commune.

“I think Tulip's work is wonderful. Lots of people do, and the Warehouse Gallery is going to exhibit her work next week. I'm learning a lot from her paintings,” Karma said, looking to the wall again, drawing Blue's reluctant attention back to the point he was hoping to avoid.

“It kind of reminds me of a face,” Blue said, then gambled. “Maybe a Halloween mask?”

“Close,” Karma said.

Blue sighed with relief.

“It's a Mayan ceremonial mask. This panel will be filled with Mayan impressions that I've had for as long as I can remember. I used to have dreams about the Mayans when I was just a little girl. Warm, sunny, primitive dreams – and I'd never even heard of Mayans at the time. I just knew about them.”

Blue decided to be blunt about this. “What's a Mayan?”

“They live in Central America, Blue. They used to have this really great civilization but it got ruined, first by themselves, I think, and then by us. That's my earliest impression of a previous life. Once the colours go on I think you'll like it a lot.”

“I'm sure I will,” Blue replied, terrified already of the remaining panels on the unpainted wall.