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straight. He had a brown beard, bare feet, tight-shrunken jeans. Under a shawl
patterned in zig-
zags his upper body was bare. Symbols popular five years earlier, wrought in
bright metal, hung from a chain against his chest. The men were both dusty and
sweating as if they had just been working in the field.
Approaching and gathering in silence, the people of the clearing looked at
their visitor with various shadings of distaste.
He, on the higher bank across the narrow water, was glad to see them all.
"Lovely people. I'd offer all you folks a beer, several beers. But y'see all
my tanks are empties." He belched gently and laughed gently, and gently shook
his jangling jacket.
The man with the shawl turned his back on the sight. But after pulling at his
beard in silence for a moment he turned once more to face it.
Not perturbed by unhappy silence, the visitor announced: "My intentions was,
t'
distribute these beer cans throughout the len-th and brea-th of this pristine
wilderness.
But as its already occupied, by such a sturdy outpost of humanity, I see no
need...hey, what you've got here is one of those communal things, I bet. I
guess, you're hippies or grokkies or whatever. I'm not very up t'date on what
th' word is now. No offense."
His only answer was in the way that they all looked at him, as if at a
disaster already happened and nothing to be done about it.
He said: "I first read about places like this, God it must be twenty years
ago, back in the sixties. I was a Boy Scout leader then, I thought tents were
a lot of fun." He swayed and dropped a can by accident, and had to catch a
branch to save his balance.
"Well, tents aren't the worst thing there is, but cities are better. Walls and
roofs and more walls and roofs, I like 'em all in neat rows. Noise and
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garbage. I've come to like noise and garbage."
"If that's your track," the black man said, "it could be you should've stayed
on it."
"I had t' visit th' frontier," the visitor said vaguely. Squinting past the
people of the clearing, past their canvas teepees, his face for the first time
showed unhappiness.
"Now there's your fields. Corn, tomatoes..." He let go his branch and came
across the creek, surprisingly quick and surefooted when he concentrated on
the uneven stepping-stones. He studied the fields again. "All right. But how
d'you work it? No real machines. You just play you're friends with nature, and
break your backs. Listen, I grew up on a farm. You need to rent or buy some
good machinery, knock down half these goddamn trees to make some room, and
raise some real crops. And put up houses! Act as if you meant t' stay on and
inhabit the planet for a while. But wait a minute." He tried to clear his head
with shaking. "Sorry. You're way out here so you can squat on some free land,
right?" You'll do things right when you get some money in, isn't that it?"
"We're just not doing things right," the shawled man said, in a remote
monotone. "We should all get stoned on alcohol and run across the country
leaving a trail of...garbage.
Wait a minute." His eyes sharpened, staring at the visitor, at whom he now
leveled a
bony forefinger. "I've seen you someplace, when I was on a trip to town. I saw
you on television, right? Now are you a reporter?"
The blond girl, in a tiny voice that might have belonged to her daughter, put
in softly:
"I was thinking that I'd seen him, too."
The man did not seem to care whether they had ever seen him or not. "I'm no
reporter.
I'm just saying " And with that he abruptly fell silent, looking past the
others to the west as if at something deeply disturbing. But when the others
turned there was nothing to be noted in the west except the going of the sun.
The shadow of a distant mountain was reaching out across the clearing where
they stood.
Now the stranger's voice contained a hint of panic. "I'll never make it back
before dark." He took a staggering step and almost slid into the creek. "Must
be two miles t'
where I left my car. Listen, good people, I call for sanctuary for the night.
I'll pay you for a place to bunk, inside a tent."
The people of the clearing exchanged troubled glances among themselves. The
shawled man told the visitor: "Just wait right where you are, one minute."
While the visitor waited the others went to stand in a little knot between the
teepees. There the adults conferred.
The black man said: "Can't let him go back right now."
"Why?" the dark girl asked.
"As drunk as he is. Suppose he falls down a ravine, or just gets lost and
dies?"
Others nodded with reluctant concern. The shawled man said: "Another point, if
he's lost and his car is found near here, then we'll be found too. Swarmed
over, investigated. At best we'd have to move."
They all looked at the visitor again. Leaning against a tree where they had
left him, he seemed to be yearning after the setting sun.
"Then he can stay the night," the black man said. No one evinced any
objection, and together they walked back to their visitor. The black man made
the offer: "If you make no trouble you can stay until morning. Leave your
garbage in the trash-pit, down that way."
The square-faced man pushed away from his tree with obvious relief. "Thank [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]