• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 306 0

warmly welcomed and hugged all around. He was even more distracted and fuzzy than usual. He had been unable to get a ride up in a boat, so rather than waiting for us to come into town or for someone to bring him up, he had attempted the overland route. No one had done that before. He had started up in the afternoon the day before and had gotten lost and had to sleep in the bush. There was a heavy snowfall that night. In the morning, soaked and half frozen, he made his way to the lake, where he was lucky enough to find a boat and some oars, and he rowed about four miles to our dock. I attributed his more than usual abstraction to physical exhaustion.

Vincent was just passing through, as was usually the case. The heroics and poetics of his getting to the farm notwithstanding, he wasn’t staying very long. He was on his way to a farm in California, where some other people from Swarthmore had something beautiful going. Later we found out that whenever he was there he was on his way to where it was really at: in B.C. with us.

Since he was just passing through and really wanting to get down to California, why had he bothered to stop by at all? We certainly weren’t on the way to anything but us. To get his dog, Tanga? To pick up some of his clothes or other stuff? When he left he didn’t take Tanga or any of his stuff. Maybe to check us out one more time, giving us one more chance to make whatever magic Vincent was searching for happen? For whatever reason, within an hour of his arrival Vincent decided and announced he was leaving.

Virginia and I had been talking about taking a trip away from the farm for a while. The dreary weather had been getting to her. It was too wet and cold to do much outside and there wasn’t much that needed to be done inside. There were people she wanted to see here and there. What was happening with the revolution, women’s lib, the cities, America? She didn’t want to get out of tune. She said she was getting too ego-involved with the farm and wanted to see what would happen to it if she weren’t there. I had been feeling some of the same things. We had been talking about taking off for a month or so and coming back when there was more work to do on the place.

When Vincent started talking about going to California it seemed to Virginia like the perfect chance for us to take our trip. The people at the commune Vincent was headed for had been friends of hers at Swarthmore. They were supporting themselves with pottery and trust funds. They had wheels, kilns, the whole bit. It was exactly what she had in mind.

But if I was going to take a vacation I wanted to just head south and see whatever I saw, meet whoever I met, and let the winds and fates put whatever they would into my path. And if I was going to head for somewhere, I sure as hell didn’t want it to be another fucking Swarthmore enclave.

I remembered Vincent’s talking about our trips from the East together after the trial. He had said he felt that Virginia and I were ganging up on him. I didn’t want that to happen again. I was pretty sure it was paranoia on his part, but real or not, it wasn’t the sort of thing I felt like dealing with again.

The biggest thing was that I wanted Virginia to be on her own. She felt that she had been dependent on me for quite a while for direction, energy, decisions, etc., and she resented it. I wanted a commitment from her to the farm, to me, to a way of life. I didn’t want her thinking I was dragging her around. If she got away from me for a bit she might make the decision and feel it was hers. Also, I remembered what a bitch she could be to travel with.

The next day we went down to the lake to see which boat and which motor we could get to work. The night before the water in the lake had dropped to such a point that Blue Marcel’s bow was on the ground and the stern had been pushed under water, submerging the Evinrude. We pulled it up and tried to get it going without much success. Dick, the old racing Merc 25, didn’t show much inclination to run either. The logical thing to do was to wait until someone came