Day Forty-Two, Orange IV

I am Here

I am still at Orange Acres, the commune, the cult; down the road from Arlee, Montana. I had meant to leave but I stopped in for coffee and long story short, I'm still here. I fed the goats and made friends with the chickens and brought water to the fruit trees. And I washed a few dishes and helped make some trailers but you can't say I'm earning my keep. I am eating fairly well around here and I don't really do much at all.

I spent a lot of my day with Henry who was scraping some glue off an old speedboat. He works precisely and so smoothly that he looks slow, but he moves quickly. He keeps his eyes on his work while he talks. He returns again to a favorite theme, his version of the Golden Rule.

"A psychopath is someone who tries to get you to do something he don't want to do himself." By Henry's reckoning there are a great many psychopaths in the world.

He tells me about the six months he spent as a crackhead. He had seen people destroying their lives with crack cocaine and was determined to investigate. He moved into a van and smoked crack.

"I couldn't wait to quit," he tells me. "I had a big red X on my calendar. But I promised myself I'd give it six months."

He wanted to know why crack ruined so many lives. He finally concluded it was because people are lazy. He says crack just made him work harder. "To get money for crack."

And after six months he quit. "That was twenty years ago. My dealer from back then still calls me. Now we are friends."

You meet a lot of interesting people when you live in a commune. There are groups within groups. I have tried to spend time with them all. I ask a lot of questions and insinuate myself and show up where I've not been invited. It is one way to make friends. I believe there is not one single person left on the compound that I cannot now greet warmly by name and with whom I cannot engage in familiar conversation.

Everyone was very impressed that I spent three hours with a bat flying around my room. I have since moved to a smaller cabin, closer to the bunkhouse. It has a Western theme and is made from old pallets. It also has electricity. I hoped it would let me use my alarm clock and wake up early. But it also has a heater. It is thirty-seven degrees
outside. Inside I've got Christmas lights.

I meant to turn in early but I wound up smoking pipes with Bevan, my neighbor, and Joe who lives down the hill. He is a mechanic for the Orange used car business and she is a butch lesbian. Now she is a student but she used to be a truck driver. She uses the F-word a lot. She writes slam poetry.

So here I am now at two AM. I ain't going to wake up early. I am going to sleep in my well-made bed. We'll see what goes on in the morning.


JOE HAS TATTOOS and likes to say things like "Hail, Satan!" He is thoughtful and well-spoken but admits he is not much of a people person.

GOATS have odd noses and weird little tongues and yellow, sinister eyes. They like to climb and they are not shy about knocking their heads together. They do seem to mean well, though.

I BELIEVE that if it were necessary, like to save the planet or something, I could, given time, make a flatbed trailer. Welding, wiring, everything. I think I could do it.

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