 |
Memory cleaned-up a bit
but, the way it was,
beats memory.
Morningstar click here for more information , articles and pics, of the Morningstar people then and today. Disclaimer: A Time Ago & Then is fiction all characters in Risingstar are from my imagination. |
Magic Maya was
having a birthday party at her place in town the past few
days. The same place where Norm, Maggie and I, had stopped a at what seemed to
me to be a lifetime ago.
Maya was one of
the original settlers from the “Beat Era” before this invasion of hippies came
into Taos. She was a working artist. Her place had a couple kilns and a full-on
painters’ studio. She was middle-aged… a little younger than Maggie… probably
forty-something and had just returned from a run, bringing a U-Haul loaded with
kilos of pot to Santa Fe from Mexico for a friend of a friend. She got busted
outside of Albuquerque but had been released on bail a few days before. It was
to be her last bash while deciding whether to jump bail, or go to court and
eventually prison. She hadn’t made up her mind yet. When the bunch of us
arrived, via the flatbed truck, the party had been in progress for some time
already.
Magic Maya’s place wasn’t near as magical as it was
the last time I had been there. It had only been a couple of months but
something had changed. It could have been in my head but I sensed that the mood
was dark. Maya’s bust was one thing but the hospitality of that first night in
Taos was almost non-existent. People had come from all over the Taos area to
celebrate a birthday and not a going-away party for one of us bound for prison.
There was plenty of Red Mountain wine laced with
acid being passed around. I felt that the events of the past week called for a
more intimate gathering and intimate was not the nature of this get-together. I
must have had a whole gallon of Red Mountain and at least a dozen hits of acid,
not counting what was in the wine. This might have also had something to do
with my perception but other things that happened that evening held clues also.
For instance: Several people were sitting on the
floor in one room listening to the stereo, hittin’ the jug, and smoking dope.
Maya’s ole man, Doug, came into the room, stood at the door and looked around…
took a few sniffs and asked, “Does anyone here smell gas?”
The folks sort of sniffed the air thick with smoke
from pipes of pot…
“No?” someone ventured an answer.
Doug crossed the room and sniffed a few more times,
“Yeh, I smell gas alright.”
“But there’s no gas heater or range in this room?”
countered, another as he lit a roach.
Doug threw his
arms out in an explosive gesture,“Naw, people, I smell gas… one open flame and the
whole place goes up in a… powooof!”
Some started leaving the room. Others stayed,
willing to brave it out for another toke. I saw it as an invitation to leave. I
went out to the street.
Maya was there and Doug joined her. I wondered if
they were trying to leave too. I asked, “You guys getting out of Dodge?”
“Yah, it is too much back there.” Maya answered.
“I thought so too. You wouldn’t be headed north to
Risingstar would you?”
So, we left. Doug dropped Maya off with me at
Brian’s place and I headed out to the goat pasture. Doug went back into town to
oversee the party at their home. The madness at Magic Maya’s place was too much
like Hollywood for me. Drunk as I was and tripping on acid, the vibe in Taos
took on some of the mania of Altamont. It was what I’d wanted to get away from
by coming out to the high chaparral of New Mexico.
The next morning, I went down to the Dome to make an
indoors breakfast of oatmeal on the wood burning stove. I was still tripping.
Stan and the girls were sleeping in the loft when I heard another car coming up
the dirt road. I liked the idea that we needn’t have sophisticated security
alarms if a dirt road was the only access to the property and the Dome was
situated like a guard house on the way up the road. I didn’t, however, savor
the job of being the security guard. I stepped outside to watch another
off-white sedan coming up the road. A long-haired kid was driving and a
cop-type was riding shotgun.
The cop-type was about six-foot-three with the build
of an athlete. He wore a NY Yankees baseball cap over partially bald
close-cropped hair he’d exposed as he took off his hat to wipe his brow. This
too was peculiar because the temperature was barely above freezing that
morning. He nudged the kid and the kid asked, “Is this the road to the Risingstar
commune?”
“Who’s askin’?” I didn’t like the looks of the
situation after the FBI visit a few days before. This was coupled with the
run-a-way girl and then Magic Maya’s bust. My suspicion was that these events
were related.
The kid reached flashed a peace sign, “I’m Steve and
this is my friend, Billy.”
I thought, peace
sign, indeed. I wasn’t so sure I liked the job of gate keeper for the commune
but something stank with this business. This had to be the oddest couple I had
seen in all my road trips so far.
“We just need a place to camp for a few nights… we
have our own tent and won’t bother anyone,” the Billy guy asked like he thought
he needed my permission to enter.
I figured that the odd couple would get everybody’s
attention regardless. Why not play along, “Yah, sure. you can park your car up
there on the mesa and pitch your tent anywhere there ain’t goat shit.” I took
Shep’s shortcut to the top and got there before the sedan pulled into the lot.
I went straight for Brian’s place in the Pueblo. Magic Maya was on the bed listening
and, after I told Brian what I’d seen, he paused a few minutes before he spoke.
“If cops are going to come up to try to find
something… well, we might as well let them look. What is the worst they can do?
What can they find?”
“Plenty,” I offered. “Plenty if they are looking for
run-a-ways and dope. Besides, I don’t feel right about playing the role of a
gate-keeper.”
Magic Maya spoke softly, “We’ll be out of here in a
few days. I can’t hang much longer. Too many people’s lives will be fucked if I
stick around.”
Brian interrupted her to say to me, “No one asked
you to play gate-keeper. They’ll have to come up here to find some sort of
leadership they can hang charges on. We’ve all seen this before back at
Mahayana Ranch.”
Wise old Brian, as usual, was right, I grinned,
thinking of the Feds trying to find a leader in this group..
Clever, you're last sentence. Great as usual.
ReplyDelete~M