The Totem

"Yes, and Brook Farm went to bust, and so did this," Parsons said.

"But what's so wrong to talk about it?"

"Look, you didn't come here just to see the difference. You came here to start that trouble once again."

Dunlap didn't understand.

"It's common knowledge how the town put pressure on them," Parsons said. "How the freaks came through here in their long hair and their costumes, dressed as Superman and God knows what all, turning kids to dope, standing on the corner, howling, blowing kisses. How the town refused to tolerate them, wouldn't sell them food or clothing or supplies, wouldn't even let them in the city limits, tried to find a way to get them off that land. How one rancher had his boy run off and went up there to get him, went a little crazy, pulled a gun and shot a guy. There's a lot of memory yet in town about that. There's a lot of feeling. I don't want you going around and making people ugly once again. Either that or guilty. I don't want you writing so this town looks like the nation's asshole. We had lots of that before. Writers coming in and making trouble, sympathizing with those freaks. You tell me how things have changed. Well, one thing hasn't. Reporters like an underdog, and the way the town reacted to those freaks, there wasn't any question who the reporters sided with. My guess is you'll be doing just the same."

"But really I'm not here for that," Dunlap said. "I just want to see the difference."

"Will you mention what went on back then? How the town reacted?"

"Sure. I guess so. That's a part of how things changed as well."

Parsons shrugged. "All right, then, there you have it."

And they looked at one another, and they waited.

The buzzer sounded on the intercom. Parsons touched a button.

"Don't forget you chair a council meeting in an hour," a woman's voice said.

"Thank you."

Parsons took his hand off the intercom, leaning back.

Christ, Dunlap thought. He isn't just the newspaper's owner and the editor and maybe owner of a half a dozen other places too. He's the god-damned mayor. Dunlap tried to think of how to smooth things. "Look," he told him. "You know just as well as I, there are two sides to a story. Back in nineteen seventy, everything was polarized. The straights and the longhairs. The hawks and the doves. One group acted one way, and the other did the opposite. The thing to do is talk to people in the town and get their version of the story, then to talk to people in the commune and get their version too."

Parsons shrugged. "There's no one out there now."

"What?" Dunlap straightened in surprise. "Nobody told me."

"Maybe two or three are still there. If they are, it's news to me."

Dunlap stared at him.

"Of course, there are ways to track the others down," Parsons said. "The names are all on file. If you've got the time."

Dunlap went on staring at him.

"Look, I'll tell you what," Parsons said. "You may have gathered from that message that I don't just run this paper. I'm on the town council. If I wanted, I could make things tough for you, see that people didn't talk to you, deny you access to the paper's files, other things."

It was the "other things" that Dunlap didn't like the sound of.

"But I won't. For one thing, that would show up in your story too. For another, you'd just work a little harder, and you'd get your story anyhow. All the same, if I wanted, I could make things tough. Now the point is, I don't want you thinking I'm against you. The fact is that I'm not. In your place, I'd act the same as you. What I do want is a simple understanding. Anything you need is yours. Ask and I'll arrange it. You go out and do your story. Then you come back to this office, and we talk. I want the chance to make this town look good to you. These people here are fine. I'm anxious that they don't get hurt."

Dunlap squinted.

"No, I'm not afraid of business being hurt," Parsons said. "People out there don't stop buying cattle just because a story makes a town look bad. What I said was true. I just don't want these people hurt."

Dunlap took a breath. "Fair enough."

"What do you need?"

"Well, for starters, let me in your paper's morgue. Then I'd like to see the records the police kept."

"That's no problem. What else?"

"Courthouse records. Trials and transcripts."

"That's no problem either."

"Then I'd like to talk to people in the town. I'll go out to the commune, too, of course."

"Of course. I'll see that someone goes out with you."

Dunlap shrugged. "That's all I can think of for now."

"Well, you'd best get at it then. Just remember. Anything you need."

"Don't worry. I'll get back to you."

"I know you will." And Parsons stared at him as Dunlap stood to leave. One thing now was certain, Dunlap thought. This was going to be a whole lot harder than he'd expected.

TWELVE

Ken Kesey was the cause of it. The Merry Pranksters and that bus. That was back in 1964. Kesey had already finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion. With his money, he had bought some land near Palo Alto, California, gathered freaks around him, and started on a trip. That was back when LSD was legal, and the trip of course was only in his mind. Then the trip was real. He had bought a bus, had sprayed it every color of the rainbow, and then dressing like a comic strip, he had shooed his freaks on board and started for New York. On the Road a decade later, Neal Cassidy as driver, that same Cassidy who'd been with Kerouac. They had ballyhooed across the country, music blaring out of speakers on the top, cha

But there were other ways, those who said that Kesey had been wrong, that with a good thing going he'd been foolish to be so in sight. Better to do it on the sly, keep things quiet, keep them truly out of sight. Like the commune, some were saying. That had been a good idea. The trouble was that Kesey ventured out. He had been his own undoing. Better find a place where no one went, stay there, do your thing. Well, they did it, and where they chose to do it was near Potter's Field, Wyoming. All it took was one rich kid whose parents had both died. He'd been with Kesey. He had seen the trouble that was coming, and he'd split. Twenty-one, he had complete control of all the money he'd inherited. He'd found a spot where no one ever went, fifty acres of thick timber in the mountains far across the valley from the town. He had bought it, paid the taxes for ten years, set up buildings, and moved in. It wasn't just a place for freaking out. He had notions of a kind of ideal way of life. Those who marched against the Vietnam war but felt they weren't accomplishing anything, those who tried to change society from within the system but found that the politicians they worked for betrayed them, these and others like them he would welcome to his arms. The new republic. Free love, free food, and free spirit. Everything was on his tab. Not an orgy, not the kind of free love everyone was thinking of. But something else. Simple freedom that permitted love, love in any form, physical, emotional, as long as no one would be harmed, the kind of freedom those who were attracted to him hadn't seen before. First there were the freaks, imitation Pranksters, some who had indeed been Pranksters. Then there were the drop-outs, those who couldn't stand things anymore, who couldn't even bear to watch the television news. Queers and junkies, cowards, troublemakers, traitors and more, that was how the straight world saw them, but in Quiller's fifty acres, they were just themselves. Quiller, twenty-one and rich and leader of his version of a country. Photographs of him were not at all what a conservative would expect. No long hair and beard and ragged jeans. No beads, guru shirts, or Captain Marvel costume. Quiller looked just as straight as those who spoke against him. Short hair reminiscent of the fifties, sideburns even with the middle of his ears, fair-ski