The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [30]
Then the crying started. First just little tears falling asleep. Then bigger tears. Then having to get away and cry alone.
Always on the verge of tears, waiting for, dreading the question, “What’s wrong, Mark?” Not being able to answer except by crying. Nothing they could do. “Just get me back to the farm. I cry a lot less out there.” They hardly ever asked. When they did, my answer was usually a look or gesture that said “Why aren’t you crying too?” And their looks seemed to wonder back.
Maybe because I had the farm I let myself go further than usual. The pressure of having to endure was gone, so I allowed myself to see the full horror. Knowing how many valleys there were like ours, why New York City? It didn’t have to be this way.
Automobiles careening. Drunks careening, junkies, pollution, misery ad infinitum, all careening. Dinners at Sardi’s, famous people, lots of talk. I fled up to the Cape for a few days.
Being alone in the big Barnstable house was strange too. A post card to Virginia: “I’ve decided to cash in a little public sanity for some inner peace of mind. At the going rate of exchange I’d be a fool not to.”
A good nigger. Laughing and crying only with his own, just coasting through the rest. Putting in time, waiting to get back to the farm where life made sense, where there was no need to cash in public sanity for peace of mind.
Finally Virginia showed up with Becky, an old housemate. Happy to see them. I was lonely as shit and going out of my mind. Then Vincent, the eternal wanderer, drove in. We could get moving. We put my Evinrude motor, a potbellied stove, and other stuff in the back of his station wagon and went up to his place in Vermont for a few days.
Virge’s brother was in the area. Some other people. It was all jumbling together. They all tripped. I didn’t. They wanted to know why. I couldn’t say. I spent a lot of time crying in the woodshed. No one noticed.
Finally, after what seemed like years, we were on our way. The tension in my head eased somewhat as we moved West, toward the farm, toward work worth doing. I stopped crying so much. Just the little tears falling asleep.
How do them folk back there hack it? Certainly not in my repertoire of tricks. Maybe it’s a blessing. If I could have hacked it maybe I wouldn’t have taken off, I wouldn’t have found the farm. Lucky me. Unlucky them. Maybe if they weren’t so tough they would have found a reasonable way to live. Maybe if people weren’t so goddamned rugged they wouldn’t have so much to be so goddamned rugged about.
It went pretty quick, driving straight through most of the way. Before we knew it, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, like a flash. Washington, the evergreen state my ass, most of it’s desert. Dead deer on every other car from Wyoming on. The Black Hills weren’t black but the Bad Lands were some of the prettiest, most awful bad land I ever saw.
Three days after leaving Vermont, we crossed the U.S.-Canadian border just north of Seattle, drove straight to the Vancouver ferry terminal, and napped in the car waiting for the first ferry. The usual two ferry rides and a hundred miles of driving (five hours) later we were at the Powell Lake Marina. Luckily John Eastman was there and took us up the lake.
Two pieces of bad news: Beowulf, who was getting on everyone’s nerves, hadn’t split as he had promised. Jack had slashed his leg with the machete. They’d brought him down to the water in a wheelbarrow and then found that neither Dick nor Moldy had any interest in being outboard motors. They had broken into a summer cabin on the lake and waited there a few days hoping a boat would come along.
John took Jack to the hospital in his boat. It wasn’t serious, but it so easily could have been. Bringing my reliable outboard from Barnstable had been a good idea.
The roof had progressed quite a bit. Vincent and I, the former foremen, surveyed critically