The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [18]
We put the boat in the water and zipped up the lake, with Mr. McKenzie’s folksy lore barely audible above the roar of his outboard.
We got to the farm after tromping a mile and a half on a soggy, misty, overgrown trail. The place was more beautiful than our wildest dreams. Lush blackberries ripening, apple trees with green fruit. Several acres of field still clear. A stream ran right by the old house. Mountains on all sides. If there was any hesitation in my mind I missed it.
“Of course there’s no value in the building,” McKenzie said professionally.
“Watch how you talk about my house.”
We walked around for a couple of hours uncovering more and more marvelous things. There were little trout in the stream, old harnesses and hardware in a collapsed shed, a wine cellar with old casks, lots of garter snakes and friendly toads. Zeke loved it.
I guess deep down inside I had never really believed it was going to happen; that we would really find something, let alone something so perfect, so beautiful, so cheap. I breathed huge sighs of relief. Home at last.
Virginia said something about shopping around some more. I laughed. I honestly thought she was kidding. She smiled and had to admit it was a hell of a beautiful place.
Swifty said something about its being pretty tough to go out for a hamburger or a movie. I laughed at that too.
Bo said that all the folks back in California would be glad to hear that they had a friendly place to visit up in B.C. I smiled and nodded.
I didn’t say much on the trip back to town. I just sat looking at the water rush by, feeling happier than I had felt in years and thinking that for the first time in years that happiness was called for.
The next morning I went to McKenzie’s office to put down a hundred dollars, which he said would be enough to hold the place while we got the rest of the money together.
Twelve thousand dollars. I had seven, Virge had three. We would need a fair amount of money for equipment and food. Simon was on the way up and he was reported to have a bundle that made ours look pretty silly. He had sounded enthusiastic over the phone but he might chicken out. I wasn’t very worried. The place was so gorgeous someone would want to come in on it with us.
GRACE. Here I was in British Columbia, with Zeke and Virginia and our meager worldlies in faithful Car Car, having just found our glorious land to build an alternative on. I had just said yes to lots of suggestions. I was taking cues. From God? World literature? Some weird consensus? I wasn’t sure. I was just staying open and saying yes as often as I could and this was where it had brought me. I felt that I was tuning in to something, something that loved me and would take care of me.
A lot of the principles I was operating on were lifted from my father’s stuff. It came from other places too. It wasn’t that I was trying to live my life by things my father had said in opposition to other things. It was just that his voice was a familiar one and seemed to be part of the larger voice that was worth tuning in to.
Somewhere along the line I had become a grace addict. When everything happens just right and it seems that someone or something is trying to tell you something, nothing is coincidence. You reach into your pocket and pull out the exact change, no more no less, and it’s terribly important.
It’s important that it appear nonsensical. A radio playing next to a TV with the sound turned off. There shouldn’t be a connection but there is, and further there’s a point or message to it, and further it’s important and if you were operating on your priggish notions of logic you would