The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [122]
Another reason for leaving was that it was time for Virge and me to go our separate ways. It wasn’t so much that I had changed as that we had been through so much together and knew each other so thoroughly. Ideally a couple reaches that degree of emotional fullness and exhaustion with the general exhaustion of old age. We were an eighty-year-old couple stuck in bodies in their early twenties.
Leaving Zeke behind was the toughest part of coming East, but there wasn’t any way around it. He was healthy, safe, and happy being king of the farm. There would have been all that traumatic traveling and I didn’t have the faintest idea where the hell I’d end up living. Virginia, Simon, Kathy, and Jack had all come to respect and love him as much as I did. They would have squawked like hell if I tried to take him with me. Besides, he wasn’t a pup any more, he was getting sort of set in his ways. I had put Zeke through odysseys aplenty. He had found his niche, it was time for me to go find mine. If it turned out to be one where he could be half as healthy, safe, and happy as he was at the farm, I’d be back to get him in a flash.
The farm went on. Jack dropped out about six months after I did and went down to Los Angeles to become a carpenter. Kathy lasted a few months beyond his leaving and then became a schoolteacher in Vancouver. Simon and Virge turned out to be the true diehards. They kept the place going with various newcomers through another two winters.
By the time they left, the house was warm and tight and had running water, a much expanded, productive garden replaced our pathetic first efforts, funky Blue Marcel was replaced by a very fast, dependable inboard, a big beautiful barn was nearing completion, and a tractor did much of the work we had once done by hand.
There have been many plans and a few stabs at making the farm a full-time operation again, but nothing that’s amounted to much. Now it’s mostly a pleasant retreat for Simon and his Vancouver friends. It’s hard to say what happened in between our all being so sure we had found some forever and our recent talks about signing the place over to some free school. The apocalyptic visions that drove us there softened as time failed to bear them out. As soon as the newness and challenge that made it fun wore off, the impact of being so isolated set in. Add that we could each expect to live another fifty years or so and you’ve got some powerful incentive to transcend the doubts about whether or not you could hack it out there. I’m just guessing. It was probably different things at different times for each of us. The one thing I’m sure of is that none of us was driven away by the hardness of the life. It really wasn’t very hard, and if any of the things we feared were happening ever do happen, it’s nice to know it’s there.
Myself. I came East, kept writing, got more and more disgustingly healthy, did substitute teaching and masonry, went back to school to learn more about the biochemistry I was suddenly so enthusiastic about, danced around love a bit before falling, and am now trying to get into medical school.
Zeke became Virginia’s dog. He managed to survive several stays in Powell River, but in September 1974, after a car-free summer at the farm, Zeke was struck and killed by a car his first day back in town. Farewell, noble, beautiful, true true friend.
4
LETTER TO ANITA
Dear Anita,
Headly has told me you’re going through some bad times that sound like bad times I’ve been through. I hope you find some of what I have to say helpful.
Schizophrenia is so awful from so many different directions all at once, it’s hard to know where to start. The important thing to keep in mind is that others have gone through it and come out in good shape. As nightmarishly dreadful an experience as it is, many recovered schizophrenics wouldn’t trade having had it for anything. I feel that way myself, though I would certainly