Invasion at Bald Eagle Read online

  They enjoyed one another’s eyes for a moment before splitting up, Sharna to take apart the kitchen, Derek heading out to the yard.

  The season had composed itself, drying its lugubrious Monday skies and doing its best to put on a sun-smile among the dissipating clouds. Derek walked around to the rear of the house, where they had hoed a patch of grass into a garden bed about the size of a swimming pool. Within its perimeter grew thirty or forty marijuana plants, all cultivated from a packet of seeds Derek had brought from Frisco. Crowded into one corner were Gary’s beloved mushrooms, which had sprouted up in the random, haphazard way fungus was wont to do. Some of the magic mushies were not fully mature, but most would be okay if picked now. They’d keep for a couple of weeks, too, and the reefer needed to be dried out anyway, so if all went to plan their crop would not be wasted.

  Derek went back inside to put on a pair of gloves. Half a year on he still had the hands of a city boy, that was part of it, but he had also heard the magic mushroom’s magic ingredient could be absorbed through the skin. He could do without hallucinations while trying to conceal the commune’s drug crop. From the kitchen he also got a Tupperware container (which someone had donated to the commune on arrival) for the mushrooms and half a dozen plastic bags for the weed.

  He took these things out to the garden bed and began harvesting the mushrooms first. The sun felt nice on his neck and he dared to wonder if things might turn out okay after all. Perhaps he and Hank were being paranoid about Sheriff Grayson. The man was the law in Bald Eagle, and if he was so hellbent on rescuing his daughter, he could already have trumped up some ridiculous charge and shut the commune down. It wasn’t like anyone gave a rat’s ass about the trifling goings-on in his insignificant speck of a town. And beneath it all, beneath the standard ‘us and them’ dispute that filled the newspapers, Derek suspected he and Bert Grayson kind of liked each other—or at least respected one another.

  Smiling at his thoughts, Derek moved on to the marijuana plants, grasping them low on the stems so they came up roots and all. Snapped in half, the first plant fit into its plastic bag and left nothing sticking out. Derek gave a pleased grunt at this and bent over to pull up a second plant. As he did, he saw someone appear in his peripheral vision and he didn’t need to look around to know who it was.

  “Is there something the matter, Milton?”

  “You’re not really considering burning all our plants, are you?”

  Derek let go of the plant and stood erect. He planned to say something to appease the kid, but instead when he opened his mouth he said, “What if I am?”

  Milton shifted on his feet as if they ached. “You know what I think, Derek? I think you’ve sold out. First you decide to abandon the free-love principle and just take Sharna for yourself, and now you’re kowtowing to the establishment and burning our weed because you’re afraid. I don’t think you’re committed to the cause anymore, man.”

  A hard smile flashed across Derek’s lips. “If you don’t like the way I’m running the place, why don’t you do something about it?”

  Behind his spectacles, Milton’s eyes looked uncertain. “Maybe I will.”

  Derek took a step forward. He had not quite invaded Milton’s personal space, but had it been airspace the Milton authorities would have been on full alert. “Then again, maybe you won’t.”

  They stared each other down. A plane droned overhead, perhaps a mile away, out above the forest proper. High-spirited insects buzzed their pleasure at the clean summer sun. A cruising bird of prey shrieked about something.

  Finally Milton looked away and retreated half a step. “This is bullshit, man. I don’t need this. I came here to be free of this conformist crap.”

  “Well, Milt, I don’t see you tethered to a ground peg. If you don’t like it here, you can always run back to your mommy and daddy and finish your law degree. Believe me, I’m not stopping you.”

  “Fuck you!” Milt screamed. He appeared on the verge of tears, like a junior high freshman cracking after weeks of bullying. “Don’t burn our crop you weak fuck!”

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m stuffing these plants into plastic bags—I want to poison us all with the fumes when I burn them.”

  Milton looked down at the bags near Derek’s feet, blinking as if he had never seen such things in his life. “I still think it’s weak that you’re going to hide this stuff. Making marijuana illegal was just another way for the government to exercise its control—”

  “Milt, I really don’t care what you have to say. Everyone agreed we should do this and that’s the way we’re doing it.”

  “I didn’t agree.”

  “Well, that’s just a case of tough titty, said the kitty.”

  Milton’s hands clenched and unclenched, once, twice, three times. Derek bent over and yanked out another plant.

  “This isn’t over,” Milton said, taking a second step back.

  Derek could tell Milton wanted him to look up. Instead he snapped the marijuana plant in two and stuffed it into the bag. “Run along, Milt. I’m sure you can make yourself useful inside.”

  “Not over,” Milt reiterated, and then walked off.

  Derek grinned. Officious people like Milt always backed down when confronted with a show of reciprocal strength. He wished he had stood up to him sooner, before he swelled with his own importance. No matter; he had now drawn a line and would keep Milton behind it.

  Half an hour later Derek had uprooted all the plants. The plastic bags were green and bloated with them. Taking off his gloves, he walked inside to find another bag almost full with joints, satchels of weed, a couple of bongs and a few packets of pills that were most likely mescaline (and no doubt belonged to Gary).

  “This is everything we could find,” Sharna said, smiling. “Short of ripping up the carpet, I don’t think Daddy will discover anything.”

  “You hid something under the carpet?”

  “That was a joke.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. Gary leaves things all over the place. I’m forever finding joints down the back of the lounge. I found a packet of pills in the sugar jar once.”

  Sharna giggled. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Okay, time to bury the evidence. You want to help me?”

  “Sure.”

  Derek took the bag off the kitchen table and went to the shed. He collected a spade, and then between them he and Sharna picked up all the bags and the Tupperware container and headed off into the forest. Near the property line the trees (mostly pines and other conifers) grew a prudish distance from one another, but further in they huddled a little more and bracken thickets started to fill out the spaces between their tall wooden legs.

  They came upon a small clearing no more than eight or nine feet in diameter. Derek looked back in the direction of the house but could see nothing aside from tree trunks and ferns. “I reckon this’ll do us,” he said, dropping the bags. Sharna dropped her load as well and sat down with her back against a tree.

  Derek used the spade to scrape away the thin mat of pine needles and then jabbed its blade into the soil. It made only a shallow cut, but he levered out some stony earth and then attacked it again, using his foot this time. It was hard work, but it was cool in the forest’s dappled light and Derek enjoyed the exercise, the way it made his back and shoulders feel hard. Within twenty minutes he had dug out a hole big enough to contain all the bags and the container. They packed everything in tight and then Derek refilled the hole from the neat pile of soil he had made. He tamped it down with the back of the spade.

  When he was done, Sharna tramped over the area to get rid of its lumpy look and then scattered handfuls of pine needles on it to effect further camouflage. Derek, meanwhile, scooped up the excess dirt and tossed it in a dozen different places until the mound was exhausted. Some more distribution of pine needles and they were done.

  They stood at the boundary of the clearing and adjudged their handiwork. “Give it a day of breezes and you’ll never know it
was there,” Derek said.

  “Just so long as we can find it later,” Sharna said.

  “Well, we’ll just have to do something to make this spot memorable.”

  They both wore short-sleeved shirts in deference to the day’s warmth and the softness of Sharna’s arm against his own stirred something up inside Derek. She must have felt it too, because they turned to look at one another and a charge seemed to pass between their eyes.

  “You feel like getting down and dirty, you naughty girl?”

  Sharna put her hand to his midsection and started to trace it downwards, passing over the buckle of his belt. “I’m a good girl,” she said, making her eyes wide.

  They spread out their clothes on the forest floor and made love, breathing deeply of the quasi-alpine air and heedless of the cursing blue jays.

  That evening, Gary sat on a beanbag and wondered what to do with himself. He smoked a cigarette, but it was filled with plain old tobacco and yielded plain old effects. He wished he had set one or two joints aside, just to see him through the days before they played courteous hosts to Sheriff Grayson. Boredom was the main problem. When you were high, existence was amusement enough in itself. ‘Nothing’ entertained you. But everyone seemed to have paired off except him and Del. Jenna and Milton (the little hypocrite) were off practicing more bedroom calisthenics, Guy and Daisy had vanished into Guy’s room in the afternoon and never emerged again, and Derek and Sharna were out in the swing seat talking quietly to one another. He could go out and join them—they would graciously accept him into their conversation—but he didn’t want to feel like a third wheel. Del lay supine on the lounge, keeping herself occupied with record after record played at a modest volume. He had tired of music, but what else was there to do?

  You used to know how to pass the time without drugs, he thought. You used to do things like writing essays and building model airplanes. Where did all that go?

  Well, nowhere, he supposed. He had brought a pen and a legal pad with him to the commune, for no reason other than he had always carried one with him since his college days. It was still there, beside the old mattress he had cribbed for a dollar from a closing hostel. What the hell, he could just put nib to paper and see what came out. It would have to beat listening to another revolution of Led Zeppelin II.

  He got off the beanbag and left the room, not bothering to say goodnight to Del. Her eyes were shut and her head tilted in time with the guitar licks.

  The head-end of Gary’s mattress was against the only wall with a window. He propped his pillow up and sat back with the pad in his lap and his pen at the ready. For a good five minutes he just gazed at the page, letting its faint blue lines slip back to a blur as he explored the unused passages of his brain. He came across all sorts of furniture from his old life—the student who had once waited after class to confess his homosexuality (why he had thought his literature professor an appropriate confidant Gary never did find out); his brief fling with a colleague that had ended sooner than he wished when her ‘real’ boyfriend proposed; his falling out with the head of the English department that had ended in blows and also ended his career at the University of New Mexico. No doubt another university would have taken him on—during his three-year tenure he’d had five critical essays published, most to peer acclaim—but he could take no more academic bureaucracy. Too many of the old guard vetoed any idea with a whiff of original thought or modernity. The ground had begun to crumble under them, and soon they would be nothing but dust buried along with their outdated beliefs, but Gary had chosen not to put up with their Jurassic attitudes in the meantime. So he had hunted for a new lifestyle that was the antithesis of academia with its stodgy traditions and adherence to pomp and ceremony. The hippie movement had been that polar opposite. When some investigation unearthed a fledgling Colorado commune seeking like-minded people, it seemed perfect. And for a time it had been, in its own way. His age had made him a novelty among the girls—old enough to be a curiosity, not so old as to be creepy. He had loved grading no papers, attending no meetings and fielding no phone calls. He could get as drunk and high as he liked without worrying about a one-hour lecture on the themes of Moby Dick the following morning. Yet somehow the hedonistic lifestyle had lost its charm. After six months, he had begun to feel like a phony, perhaps even an impostor. He was a cuckoo living among wrens, using their nest to heal some wounds.

  He wrote on the notepad in neat block letters, TIME TO GO?

  Maybe not right away. He would at least stay until this business with Sheriff Grayson settled down—he was no yellow-back. But if he remained at Peace Out too much longer, he’d end up frying his brain or hooking himself a nice drug addiction. There would be no point—

  His thoughts scattered as someone opened his bedroom door. Without knocking—a no-no even in the commune environment.

  “Hey, if you don’t…oh, Daisy.”

  She came into his bedroom and closed the door. She wore nothing but a cotton nightshirt, which ended about halfway down her thighs. Her hard nipples stood out like two tiny bullets and gave way to the gentle downward swell of her breasts. She seemed to be wearing a light red shade of lipstick, but Gary knew that could not be—none of the women used cosmetics.

  “Make love to me, Gary,” she said, her bare feet padding cat-like across the floor.

  Gary felt himself swell with interest, quite against his will. “I thought you and Guy were…I thought…”

  “Make love to me,” she said again. She stood before him now, the desirable crevice of her thighs filling his field of view. He had seen this all before, of course, yet his heart hammered in his chest as she tucked her fingers beneath the hem of her nightshirt and started to slide it up. He saw more thigh, more thigh, more thigh…then like the reveal in some promiscuous prestidigitation, her vagina appeared, the labia pink and engorged—a glistening fruit so ripe it had begun to split.

  Daisy dropped to her knees and began to wrestle with the drawstring cord on Gary’s pants. She uttered a furious little sound as the double-knot refused to loosen, and Gary watched on with a kind of unbelieving thrill as she put her head down and used her teeth to untie it, as might a dog.

  Once she had emancipated him from his pants, she took hold of his penis with one hand and straddled him, guiding him into the slick warmth between her legs. He reached out to cup the youthful firmness of her breasts and began to thrust into her.

  Do I really want to leave this behind? Gary thought.

  Jenna set up her easel near the front gate, just shy of the shade line the trees threw onto the yard. She found that the track, snaking away down the hill and vanishing from sight, helped unlock her creativity. Paths, tracks, roads—they were all going somewhere and they carried her mind other places as well.

  Presently her mind hovered above the deck of a cruise liner. A woman in a red and white striped bikini lazed on a deckchair, a huge pair of fly-eye sunglasses protecting her sight from the sun. Everything around her, including the deck and the rail, was a brilliant white—nearly too stark to look at. Between the bars of the rail Jenna had painted the ocean an almost featureless indigo, dark and brooding. So far the painting had nothing else, but in her mind’s eye a man dressed in a dark-mustard suit was approaching from the stern. She could not properly see his face under the shadow of his hat, but he was clearly looking at the girl in the red and white bikini. Jenna had been working on the painting a few days and she was now in the final creative throes. She couldn’t wait for the man to appear, to see just what he added to the overall effect.

  She had only dabbed on the arm of his jacket when she heard footsteps moving across the grass. She assumed it would be Milton, and the prospect did not thrill her. She liked to be with him in the bedroom—making love to a nerd made her feel immensely attractive, even powerful—but lately he had decided to try and make her a confidant as well, and that didn’t interest her. Milton was a boring person trying to find a more interesting side to himself, one that didn’t exist.
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  But when she turned around she was surprised to see Gary. She felt the opposite way about Gary—their one sexual experience had been their last; a flat, fumbling encounter that neither had tried to repeat. But she liked to be around him. He reminded her of her eldest brother, who had always seemed like Superman—impossibly strong, wise and capable.

  “Hi, Gary,” she said.

  She expected some praise for her picture—Gary above all others in the commune took an interest in her art—but he didn’t even look at it.

  “I’ve decided to leave,” Gary said.

  “What?”

  “I’ve decided to leave the commune.”

  He seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes—they lit from one corner of her face to another like flies, never landing where they were supposed to.

  “Why are you leaving?”

  “Time to go,” he said, nodding.

  Jenna put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Gary?”

  As if reacting to her touch, his eyes found hers at last. “I’m just a bit sad about leaving, that’s all.”

  “Well, we’ll all be sad to see you go. It’s so sudden. Have you told Derek?”

  “No, I wanted to tell you first.” His eyes sought the tip of his right eyebrow and stayed there a second or two. Jenna wondered if he was suffering withdrawals from the drugs…or, conversely, if he was under the effect of some he had stashed for a rainy day. “I have a favor to ask before I go.”

  “Anything, Gary. Just tell me what it is.”

  “Make love to me.”

  This took Jenna aback. She had not expected sex on his agenda. “Gee, Gary, do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, we’ve never really spoken about it before, but I don’t think either of us had much fun the first time around.”

  Gary’s eyes flicked to his other eyebrow, quivered there a second, then dropped to the center again. “That’s the reason I want to try again. I want to…I want to put things right between us before I go.”