The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [86]
I was a little wary about Simon. What was in those blanks? I knew he had been with me through most of them. What did he think: Was he afraid of me? Disgusted with me? Could he trust me? What was our new relationship to be like? He seemed pretty free and easy and I was greatly relieved.
We were each other’s complement, which was why we had made such a good team going backward in time. No points of friction. If I felt like stomping Vincent it was because he struck me so much as a parody of myself in questionable taste.
Prior Road. What did they know? What did they think? It felt good to be back. Back to a wood stove, back on my turf. Back with my people. When Virginia and I took a little walk she told me she wasn’t comfortable there. She was worried that the folks there might consider her responsible for the hell I had been through.
NICK FROM COLORADO. There was this guy Nick. Nick was from Colorado, which he announced like it was important somehow. The first time I looked at him I felt the hair on the back of my neck start to rise. This guy was trouble. He had blue eyes, which didn’t help, and long red hair like Columbus, who had fucked this continent in the first place. He was skinny as a rail and didn’t smoke cigarettes. I tried my best to treat him like everyone else, but the case against him kept building and building. He wasn’t like everyone else. For one thing, he was the one guy there who had just mysteriously showed up. Everyone else I had met before or was well known by someone I knew. They all had good credentials. But who the hell was this cat and what was he doing here?
His body was terrifyingly skinny. When he took his shirt off I had seen more flesh on pictures out of Auschwitz. There was an utter lack of compromise in him, no give. Some set purpose. But here he was in the middle of nowhere. What was this purpose, this resolve all about?
His hair was halfway down his back. His beard hadn’t been trimmed for at least a year. He was only eighteen. What caused those lines on his face?
I was sure he didn’t eat white bread, was fairly sure he ate no meat. With a body like that, I wasn’t sure he ate at all. Lean hungriness. Was he what Virginia had wanted me to be? Was this the revolutionary fervor I lacked, the strength that would have kept me out of the nut house? Was this the young buck come to take on the old, tired, compromised, weakened stag?
I knew there was no way I could talk about these feelings without Simon and Virginia getting scared that Mark was going crazy again, but it wasn’t just my head, any more than dreams are nonsense.
There was a meal and some chatting about spring coming and what sort of future we could expect for our communities. A little shop talk about seeds and fertilizer, etc.; talk about cooperation among the various groups that were in the area. Little by little, people drifted off to various places to sleep. Some to the barn, some to tents, some to different rooms in the main house. There was a double mattress right in the main room, where we had eaten. Virge and I decided that since no one else wanted it, we would sleep there.
It was our first night together in some time, the reunion I had worried about so much just before I cracked. Then it was just wondering about what her having slept with Vincent would do to our relationship. But now so much more had happened.
She started getting menstrual cramps. Transparent and I almost said so, but the old rules were coming back. We just laughed a little about our lousy timing as far as getting back together.