Chapter 11. Sunflower & The Georgia Peaches

Ghost moved on after about two weeks, leaving Stan without the bread truck for a flop. The seemingly tiny space in the A-frame was just big enough to house two people comfortably, with about a foot in between when we were in our bags. So, I offered him a spot.

I had acquired a small library consisting of a Bible, biographies of W.C. Fields and Nicola Tesla (who was completely unknown then), and a copy of the Aquarian Gospel of Saint Thomas. Stan didn’t seem to have a need for reading but sat by the fire outside on those cold nights as I curled up with a book inside.

One such night, Stan came in from the cold as I was reading, “What’cha readin’; the Bible?”

“The Gospel of John,”

Stan crawled into his bag. “I’m fuckin’ bored…” he clasped his hands behind his head, “I ain’t religious or nothin’ but can you read what you’re readin’ to me?”

“Sure, boss, don’t mind at all.”

“I like hearin’ stuff but I can’t read.”

“Did you ever want to?” I had known a few people who couldn’t read but knew that it was extremely rare to have any of them admit it. Most sort of got by through school, and even the military, by faking it or memorizing whole passages … God knows how.

“Yah, I wanted to, but by the time I wanted to, I’d dropped out of school to run the streets.”

“Okay, so I’ll start from the start:” I read, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made…”

“Why didn’t it just say; in the beginning God made everything?” Stan wasn’t being a wise ass. Stan had little tolerance for making the simple complex and he had a good instinct for making the complex simple.

Stan listened to me read for several nights. He enjoyed the biography of W.C. Fields the most. But when we talked Stan talked mostly about women. “These girls,” he said with his usual candor, “most of ‘em don’t wear no underwear… no panties… You notice that”

“Yah sure,” I couldn’t deny I’d paid attention to one of them who always sat open-legged on a chair or on the ground.

“You see her, Joe’s ole lady, Kate?” Stan continued, “You think she’s a tease or does she even know that she was pointing her pussy straight at me while we were eating the other day.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Well, she got red pubes and she ain’t shy about flashin’ ‘em.”

“Yah, but she’s Joes ole lady and I wouldn’t want to tangle with him over her.” I cautioned.

“Why, he’s so bad?” Stan sounded disappointed. They were drinking Red Mountain they acquired on the trip into town and it was drawing the street punk out of Stan.

“Let me tell you about what happened a week before you guys got here. We all were hanging out by the fire and the girls decided they wanted to go down to Arroyo Hondo and dance to some juke box music.”

“So, Sam and his ole lady Sandra, Joe and Kate, and a few others all piled into that ’49 International flat-bed and went down to the bar and grill down the hill.” After a pause to make sure Ralph was paying attention, I continued, “We all got inside and there were about a dozen rednecks hanging out at the bar. Now Sam, being six-foot-seven and black with an afro and white woman stood out enough, but Sandra, being a big beautiful blonde, made them the object of some muttering from the boys in the booths.”

“Oh, I see …”

“Yah, then there was Joe; a pure blood, reservation Papago… dancing with Kate and the rest of us were dancing too, when the remarks started getting louder… something was said about Injuns and white girls who fuck Injuns… Well, Joe stopped dancing right there and took one of the cowboy’s beers and poured it out on the table right there! He said something about how white boys can’t handle firewater and oughta go home… back to Europe, where they came from. Meanwhile Samuel sort of ushered us all out back to the truck as Joe backed out the door facing the cowboys… must have been four or five that had gotten up…, I could hear Samuel saying, ‘We don’t want no trouble… we’re just going to walk out to our truck and we’ll be gone… as we got out the door everyone piled onto the flatbed of the truck except Joe… he was backing out slowly with the cowboys right after him. Joe made a break for the truck and grabbed a tire iron from it. Those cowboys were right on his ass. He spun around with that tire iron, jet-black braids swinging left to right… right to left and whacked the lead cowboy smack across the face!”

“Shit, then what happened?”

“He shouted out to Sam to get the truck out of there and he let out a war-whoop going after those cowboys like he was Crazy-fuckin’-Horse. It was amazing! Then Sam turned the truck around and drove straight for the crowd while Joe grabbed a side rail on the flat-bed and leapt into the back like it was his horse in a Cowboy and Indian movie… we hauled ass out of there but, thankfully, no one followed.”

“I see what you mean now.” Stan admitted as we headed for a special meeting at the kiva.

Down at the Kiva the group had gotten together to introduce the new folks to meditation. We all, even the winos from the parking lot, went down to see what it was all about. I was slightly buzzed from the wine, and so was Stan, as we sat there with the group watching and listening to Samuel.

Sitting in the lotus position, he spoke, “When we greet each other we ask, ‘How ya’ doin’?’ We hardly give it a thought and answer automatically; ‘Fine, I’m doin’ just fine.’ If the truth were known we might not be doin’ so well at all. In fact, things might be fucked up worse than ever… but we say ‘fine’. We can’t be authentic with other people because we aren’t authentic with ourselves. Meditation isn’t about navel-gazing as much as it is about uncovering the layers of the onion through the unconscious by means of chanting or focusing on our bodies through our breath.”

It went like that as Samuel taught about the word, “OM”, and how to say it correctly without trying to sound pretty or melodic; but rather to let it out from the belly…. aaaaahhhhh, OM… and then he went into a bit on chanting. He brought up the Nichiren Buddhist chant of “Nam-Yoho Renge Kyo” that I had been introduced to in Hollywood. Samuel was a good teacher and I absorbed most of what he to say… especially since I had sobered up a bit. Surprisingly, Stan was soaking it up too.

When we got back to the A-frame, Stan brought up the subject of women again. “You know, there ain’t any available girls around here.”

“Yah?” I wondered where this conversation was going but I knew Stan well enough to know that he was earnest.

“What if we chanted for pussy? Eh?” Stan was grinning, “Let’s see if this crap is bullshit or not.”

I wondered, saying, “Hmmm… How would we do that? Say we just chanted the word, Pussy?”

“That sounds good to me… Pussy!”

We were both laying there flat on our backs with our hands clasped behind our heads… I said “Pussy!” and then Stan said, “Pussy.” I answered with “Pussy.” And we went on like that for a good fifteen minutes… in unison and back and forth: “Pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… Om, pussy… aaah… Om!”

“Do you think it worked?” Stan asked.

“Do you see any pussy here… now?” I answered.

Stan was puzzled, “Maybe we didn’t chant long or hard enough.”

Such faith; Stan had expected two women to show up there out of the night after fifteen minutes of chanting.

We went to sleep.

The next morning, we awoke to the usual breakfast of oatmeal with raisons. A new red and white VW van was in the parking lot. After breakfast, we went over to the Pueblo where there was music coming from one of the rooms with the door open and several people inside.

I walked in the door to see a gorgeous brown-eyed, jet-black-frizzy-haired, dark-skin, girl playing a twelve-string accompanied by a long-straight-haired redhead playing a mandolin. I locked eyes on the dark, frizzy-headed, one and she stopped playing to ask me, “Do you know where we can get a bath around here? We’ve been driving all night to get to this place.”

“Yah, sure,” Stan jumped on it like a lightning bolt… and looking at me, exclaimed, “Chanting does work.”

“There is a pond a bit from here, but it is cold… still got ice on most of it,” I ventured. One of the peculiarities with the high desert was that it might be freezing with snow on the ground in the shade but, in the sun, if protected from the wind, you could sunbathe.

“Let’s go then,” Frizzy introduced herself, “I’m Sunflower and this is my friend, Debby.”

I was a bit dazed as I led the group down to the pond. Once there the girls immediately put out a couple of blankets they’d hauled with them and stripped down. Stan followed suite and I slipped out of my denims too. I was in awe of being in the presence of such beauty. The sunlight played with reflections of water glimmering off goose-bumped flesh as wondrous and anything else in nature’s display. I quickly headed for the water and dove in while the others tested the water one toe at a time. The icy-cold of it was a shock but I was not one to prolong agony. Swimming vigorously back to the bank, Sunflower dove over my head and into the icy water. Coming up from the dive screaming gleefully shocked she grabbed me from behind as Stan and Debby dove in behind her. I felt her perky, chilled, nipples press in against my back as I fell back into the pond. There was no escaping the thrill and the chill of it.

Yes, there was sex. There was talk of this and that. I had not been so fulfilled since the Pillow Shack with Mary. I wasn’t about to allow the moment to go unappreciated. Making love in the sun out under the New Mexico sky was more than sex for me. It was a holy moment in time, forever sacred in the open delight of sense for the sweet quality of it. This, I thought, is what making love ought to be… for I was making love… despite the casual nature of it. I was in, on, and above love, as the passion mounted and subsided.

Sunflower hung out with me and the rest of the folks there in the Pueblo for a while. I began feeling like I wanted to cut her away from the herd to keep her for myself. She played the twelve-string guitar in the small room where we’d first met, sweetly strumming and falling into a rhythmic flow of words and images unlike anything I’d ever heard before. As I watched I pictured the bucolic life of the two of us standing barefoot in corn fields and making babies together. Back in the A-frame we made love into the night.

I realized years afterwards that these two girls had come to get laid with no strings attached. They weren’t looking for anything else... no commitment beyond the ole Yam-ah-Yum.

“How long do you plan on staying here?” I asked, thinking of corn fields, bare feet and babies.

“We are heading out first thing tomorrow.” She nuzzled her nose into my neck by the shoulder.

My mind raced… my Gawd! Thinking of the scene in Easy Rider where Fonda said he had to be moving on… the commentary in my head said her choice was too much like Fonda’s character, Captain America’s, last chance to be human and settle down before going off to New Orleans to meet his fate. “Do you know there are alternative universes where you stay here with me?”

“I would like that… I really would, but I have a boutique on Sunset that needs my attention.” She turned serious.

“But…”

“No… don’t argue.” She rolled on top of me, “This is a special moment. Perhaps in the alternative universe you speak of, we are already in it and doing it… hmmm… but I need to do what I am doing, Max.”

I understood and I certainly knew better than to argue while bodily engaged.

The warmth of the little hearth filled the A-frame as we lay there afterwards. She explained further, “When I saw you first walk in the door of that room in the Pueblo, your spirit occupied the whole room. I had to make love to you… I just had to. But I can see now that you are trying to make your spirit smaller to accommodate me…”

Sunflower left the next day leaving Debby and Debby’s sister, Leah. I hadn’t noticed that Debby had a sister with her. Leah had spent the day before visiting an old friend at the geodesic dome next to the road on the way up. There was no chance I would have seen her, even had I not been so busy with Sunflower. I went back to the A-frame and the goats while Stan moved in the geodesic dome with Debby and Leah. The man-friend Leah had been visiting at the dome left for L.A. with Sunflower, so Stan had the whole dome and the two sisters to himself.