Evergreen, Chapter 10
November 22: Thanksgiving
“Hey, Lucas, glad you could make it.”
The weathered, two-story farmhouse where Alma lives is home to at least four other people. It sits on a large plot on Overhulse Road, less than a mile from Evergreen, but on the other side of campus from the dorms, so it was a long walk and I have arrived for Thanksgiving dinner empty-handed.
“Sorry, I didn’t bring anything. But I’m good at doing dishes.”
“We’ll definitely need help with that. And there’s tons of food.”
The ride to Long Beach didn’t work out. I hadn’t bothered to ask Janie about when her friend Colleen would be driving back, but as I was stowing my guitar and bag in the trunk of Colleen’s car early Tuesday morning, Colleen said, “I hope you’re cool with leaving early Saturday morning, Lucas. We can stay with a friend in Ashland Saturday night, but I don’t want to drive over the mountains south of there in the middle of the night.”
A quick calculation told me that if I went to Idyllwild with Emily on Friday, I wouldn’t be able to get back to Long Beach in time to join Colleen for the return trip. She was not happy when I bailed at the last minute, but I saw no reason to spend forty-eight hours in a cramped car just to hang out with my family for a couple of days, especially since one of those days would include my extended Southern California family: grandparents, aunt and uncle, cousins. They’re all nice enough, but we have little in common, and Thanksgiving day would be spent at my grandparents’ house watching football on TV and eating jello salad, limp Brussels sprouts, candied yams, and other Midwestern delicacies, in addition to the usual turkey and mashed potatoes. I will miss the pies, however. My grandmother bakes the best pies: peach, pumpkin, pecan.
I was sad to see Janie drive away. She got the green light to finish the semester at home and had applied for a leave of absence for winter quarter. I told her I’d call her over winter break, but she said she might not be in Long Beach. Her family usually spends Christmas in Colorado, and her mother was talking about spending most of December there, too, since Janie’s father would be getting their house ready to be sold.
After the Long Beach trip was ruled out, I spent the day moping: playing my guitar, reading Dead Souls, and digging around in the Library, where I found an account of Nixon’s “I am not a crook” press conference in the Sunday Seattle Times and a couple of bluegrass LPs in the music collection. Unfortunately, I neglected to get in touch with Walt until Wednesday morning, by which time he had left town, so I missed the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Seattle. I ran into Alma at the Wednesday Night Movie, a strange Yugoslav, anti-Soviet slice of film noir called Love Affair, and she invited me to join the fall feast at her house. I hadn’t thought to stock up on groceries, and since the Evergreen cafeteria is closed for the long weekend and the Evergreen Shuttle doesn’t run on Thanksgiving, if not for Alma’s invitation, in addition to missing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, I would have had to subsist on crackers and peanut butter until sometime Friday.
Jenny is in the kitchen, slicing potatoes and loading them into an immense cauldron. The room is a hive of food preparation, fragrant with the birthing of a feast: a roasting turkey (of course), a bubbling pan of cranberries on the stove, a couple of misshapen loaves of freshly baked bread steaming on the counter, and what smells like a very cheesy macaroni and cheese, recently removed from one of two ovens. A large pile of greens is waiting to be shredded in one corner of the long kitchen table, next to mounds of cut-up broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots awaiting the steamer. Jenny gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but she forgets to set her knife down before embracing me, and it nicks my elbow. I flinch instinctively.
“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry. Are you OK?” she says. “I’m so clumsy.”
“I think I’ll survive,” I say, watching a drop of blood emerge from an inch-long cut that barely breaches the surface of the skin. “Do you need any help?” I ask, looking around. Three strangers are too busy to look up or register my arrival.
“I think we’ve got it covered, but you’re sweet to offer. I was so glad when Alma told me you were coming. I’m sorry you didn’t get to go home like you’d planned.”
“It seems to have all worked out for the best. This dinner looks way more tasty than any Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had.” I don’t mention my disappointment at my foiled rendezvous with Emily.
“Alma and Sid and Ezra and some other folks are out in the barn, if you want to go jam,” she says. “It’ll be another hour before dinner is ready. I’ll be out as soon as the potatoes are simmering.”
“OK, cool, but I didn’t bring a guitar. I walked all the way here.”
“I’m sure there’s one you can borrow. Just ask Sid or Ezra.”
I start for the door at the back of the kitchen, but Jenny says, “Before you go, could you check on the fire in the living room? It might need more wood. There should be some in the basket, but if not, the woodpile is next to the barn.”
Fortunately, the basket of wood next to the fireplace is full. After placing a small quarter-log on the fire—though it doesn’t need it; the room radiates an aromatic, piney warmth—I retreat out the back door, passing a long, roughhewn plankwood table already set with a motley mix of dishes, glassware, and utensils, and add log splitting to the list of things I’ll need to learn as a member of the Northwest’s “back to the woods” community.
The muffled sound of electric guitars, bass, and drums playing a countrified Grateful Dead song (“Dire Wolf,” I think) leads me to the correct outbuilding. A small PA, along with a drum kit and a couple of amplifiers, is set up inside the dilapidated, open structure, which is redolent of mold, pot, pine needles, and motor oil but surprisingly dry. When the song ends, Alma sits down at the upright piano set against the back wall and arpeggiates a few chords, while the two guitarists confer about something. Andrew is one of them and the other is the good-looking bearded friend of Jenny’s she had been with the day I met her. When Alma’s piano arpeggios coalesce into a song, he and the bass player, whom I don’t recognize, join her. Andrew, who seems not to know the song, unplugs his guitar and comes over to say hi.
“Hey man, I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“I ran into Alma last night and she invited me. I was supposed to . . . well, it’s a long, boring story, but I’m glad I ended up here. This is a cool scene. Do you live here, too?”
“At Willowberry? No, no, but I’ve been jamming a bit with Sid and Ezra lately and they invited me for dinner. This is their rehearsal space. Nice, huh?”
“It’s great. Do you guys have a band?”
“No. Sid and Ezra do, with Alma and Jenny and the drummer there, Charlie. Except for Jenny, they all live here at Willowberry, along with Sid’s girlfriend and maybe some others, too, I can’t keep track. They’ve got a gig at the DeLuxe Tavern in West Oly next weekend. We should go. They’re good.”
“Yeah, this sounds cool.”
When Alma finishes singing the song, which I assume is an original, she comes over to greet me.
“Hey Lucas, glad you found us. Do you want to play anything?”
“I didn’t bring a guitar, but I’m enjoying listening to you all play. I hear this is your band?”
“It’s not my band. We’re a collective. Jenny too, but I’m sure she told you that.”
“No, not really. Do you have a name?”
“The Fabulous Family Fruit Stand Band.” She laughs. “Yeah, I know, kind of goofy.”
“Aren’t they all?” I say, thinking of the Sea Slug String Band.
Andrew has drifted away and is playing again with the others, a blues of some sort. Alma joins them. Feeling slightly self-conscious as the lone onlooker, but too shy to join in, I decide to go outside and take a look around the farm.
I don’t feel much like playing anyway. I practiced all morning and most of yesterday and the day before, as much as my fingers could stand, ever since Janie and Colleen drove away, leaving me alone outside A Dorm, staring into the woods until I felt water pooling in my sneakers, which I was wearing because, you know: destination California!
I’ve been working on a couple of fiddle tunes, one the Sea Slugs are playing, “Salt Creek,” which I learned from a Doc Watson record, and one that Eric showed me at our last group guitar meeting, Clarence White’s version of “Soldier’s Joy,” which is more complicated than the version the fiddlers play at the square dance. Clarence’s guitar version includes long strings of eighth notes that I keep screwing up—inadvertently adding or removing a note or beat as I try to force the melody into muscle memory—as well as some odd syncopation, the logic of which eludes me.
I’m also working on arranging Duke Ellington’s “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,” combining the melody with as many of the chords as I can, but I’m better at playing either the melody or chords, not both at the same time. The jazz shapes are unwieldy and no matter how much I try to simplify them, I can never get all my fingers to arrive at their assigned destinations as one. I’ve been using some finger-strengthening exercises suggested by Andrew to increase my speed and consistency, and while they seem to help on the fast strings of notes in fiddle tunes, they’ve done nothing for my ability to change from one complex jazz chord shape to another.
Last night, I figured out the chords to one of the songs Jenny sang at the retreat, “Don’t Fence Me In,” which I have since learned is a cowboy/jazz standard, not a Dan Hicks song, and this morning, I learned the chords to “Love Has No Pride,” thinking I might end up playing music with Alma and Jenny today. I wasn’t expecting to have to compete with their band, however. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t bring my guitar.
Jenny is leaving the house as I close the door to the barn, so I wait for her by the woodpile. As she walks across the yard, the sun, long sought, erupts through slowly dissolving clouds, the first time I’ve seen it in weeks. We both look at the sky above, watching a ragged hole in the cloud cover dilate, as if the waking sun is trying to burn its way through.
“That’s so beautiful,” Jenny says when she reaches me, her gaze still on the heavens. “But you’re not playing?”
“I thought I’d take a look around. Now I’m glad I did.” She turns her head toward me and looks up into my face, smiling. Her hand grasps my shoulder, squeezing it gently as her eyes return to the bluing sky.
“I’ve got an idea,” she says. “Come with me.”
She sets off across the yard, striding purposefully into the tall grass and through the middle of a thriving vegetable garden. I would have thought that November would not be a good time for gardening, but there’s still a healthy crop of broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, and some greens I don’t recognize, explaining the surfeit of vegetable dishes on the Thanksgiving menu. On the other side of the garden, Jenny climbs a mound of small logs, branches, and old fence posts, turning at the top to offer me a hand. After we surmount this hurdle, she continues holding my hand as she guides us onto a path that leads into the forest.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Patience. You’ll see. I just hope the sun stays out.”
In the dense grove the intense sunlight dims, but the light flickering through the trees and dappling the ground signals that the sun has not yet retreated behind the clouds. Jenny releases my hand as the path narrows, and I follow close behind. The trees are wet and the intermittent drops from the branches are cool and refreshing. My heavy winter jacket is back at the house, but I don’t need it. Jenny is also jacketless, wearing a loose sweater and tight blue jeans that accentuate the alluring curves hidden beneath. Her thick hair spills over her shoulders into the middle of her back, and tiny flashes of light glint off droplets of water clinging to her tresses. I follow transfixed, trusting in my guide and our destination, whatever it might be. As the path widens, Jenny turns to me, taking my hand again.
“Just a little farther, I promise.”
A minute later the trail opens out into a small meadow, the far edges of which are lined with large round bushes maybe six or seven feet high, covered with bright-purple flowers. The sun shining on the middle and far end of the meadow transforms the bushes into glowing, magenta beacons. Jenny drops my hand as we approach the middle of the glade. Speechless, I turn slowly to take in the whole scene, stopping to face her as I complete a circle. Her eyes have a yearning, beseeching quality, as if she wants something, though not necessarily from me, something she’s afraid, or doesn’t know how, to ask for.
“They’re called ‘princess flowers’ or ‘glory bushes,’” she says, anticipating my question.
“They’re certainly glorious,” I say. “But they seem a little too wild and free to be princesses. How did they get . . . did you plant them?”
“No, I found this place last summer, when I came down to visit Alma. I’ve been tending them when I can, clearing away fallen branches and debris, although they don’t need much care. They’re doing fine on their own, but I don’t know if they’ll survive a frost. I don’t think many people know about this place. I want to keep it secret, sacred.”
“Well, thank you for sharing your secret with me.”
“I thought you’d appreciate it,” she says, taking my hands and guiding them around and behind her back. When they meet, she slides her hands under my arms until they join at the small of my back. Her face burrows into the indentation below my shoulder blade, and she wriggles slowly from side to side, pressing her breasts and hips against me. A quiet moan escapes her lips. I don’t know what to do. It’s my understanding that her boyfriend is just a few hundred yards away, so I let her control the embrace, allowing her body to move against mine, blindly accepting its subtle commands.
Suddenly, as if she’s remembered something mundane—the approaching dinner, perhaps—she pulls away, but smiles up at me. “We should go.”
She turns and walks quickly toward the path and I scramble to catch up with her. As she passes the tree line, she turns to make sure I’m following, and then hurries through the forest as if alone. The forest is colder now, the light is muted, and water drips onto my head and shoulders. Now I wish I had my jacket. I trip on an unseen root, catching myself against a tree, but my stumble is silent, and Jenny doesn’t notice. She’s waiting for me when I exit the forest, and we walk side by side, but a foot apart now, back to the house, skirting the garden this time. The barn is silent, and I wonder if the band has gone to the main house for dinner.
“Where’ve you been?” Alma asks Jenny as I close the kitchen door behind us. “The potatoes are burnt.”
We haven’t been gone that long, but Jenny says, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I thought I asked Bill to watch them.”
An older, bearded, slightly stooped man says, “You didn’t say anything to me about ’em.”
“They’re not bad, a little charcoal on the bottom,” Alma says and then repeats her first question: “Where’d you go?”
“I was showing Lucas around the farm,” Jenny says.
“That’s funny, I didn’t see you anywhere,” Alma replies, giving Jenny a look that seems to say, “I know what you’re doing. Don’t think I don’t.” Jenny doesn’t respond, but instead grabs the potato pot and spoons the unburnt potatoes on top into a large casserole dish.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask Alma sheepishly.
“No, but thanks. Just find yourself something to drink and have a seat at the table. We’re about ready to eat.”
I eat mostly in silence throughout the long, delicious dinner. There are fifteen diners. I’ve been seated near one end between two people who look to be in their thirties and who, after perfunctory introductions, ignore me. Alma, Jenny, and Andrew, the three people I do know somewhat, are at the other end, and everyone else seems to know one another. The conversation is lively yet inconsequential. At least two voices can be heard at all times. My two favorite subjects, politics and music, aren’t among the topics of conversation, which instead include hiking trails on the Olympic Peninsula; the prices at REI, the Seattle outdoor clothing and camping gear store; the formation of a food co-op in Olympia; how the Willowberry vegetable crop fared this year; the health of various diners’ family members; whether Jenny’s age will be a problem at the gig the Fabulous Family Fruit Stand Band (most often referred to as Los Fabulosos or the Fab Fruits) are playing next weekend at the DeLuxe Tavern; and the appearance of a snowy owl on the Nisqually Delta.
“A friend was hiking out there last weekend and caught a glimpse of it,” Andrew says. “We’re going to go back and try to find it on Saturday.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jenny says. “Can I come?”
“Sure, anyone who wants to can join us,” Andrew says. “I mean, we shouldn’t all go at the same time. We might scare it off.”
“I’d love to come,” I say. “But . . . the Nisqually Delta? Would we be tromping around in a lot of water?” I had seen the Delta from the freeway on the Vancouver trip and it looked like a swamp, a tangled maze of intertwined levees or raised trails dividing a vast network of saltwater pools.
“There are trails through most of it, but I wouldn’t go without waterproof boots,” Andrew says. “Rain pants would be good, and a raincoat, of course. But it’s not like we’ll be traipsing through freezing water.”
“My boots are kind of flimsy,” I say.
“I’m driving up to REI tomorrow, if you want to tag along,” Andrew says. “There’s a post-Thanksgiving sale, and I could use some stuff.”
“Cool, I’m in,” I say. I glance at Jenny as the conversation takes a different turn. She shoots me an odd look that I fail to interpret.
San Diego, 1962
I tell Mom that I know where the car is, but she doesn’t believe me. It’s the largest parking lot any of us have ever seen, the parking lot for the Sandy-eggo-zoo. I’ve never been to a Sandy-eggo-zoo before. I don’t now who thinks it’s sandy. It’s not. It’s very clean, except in the cages, probably. Something is making that horrible smell, that’s for sure.
I let Mom look around the parking lot for a while. I’m not eager to get back in the car, which is really Dad’s. We just borrowed it from him so we could go to the Sandy-eggo-zoo. It’s a long drive back home, to the hills, to the haunted house we’ve been living in since we—my dad, my brother, and I—moved here last winter, which seemed more like summer, which made me wonder if southern California is in the “southern atmosphere.” Dad told me once that in the southern atmosphere the seasons are reversed, that when it’s summer here, it’s winter there, or vice versus. It’s been summer ever since we got here, though, almost a year ago. Maybe the seasons are longer here, in the southern atmosphere. It was Halloween a few weeks ago, and Thanksgiving is coming up, but the leaves on the trees never changed from green to red or yellow or orange, which is called “fall” or “awesome.” Maybe there is no awesome in the southern atmosphere. Or maybe the palm trees in southern California don’t really have leaves? They just have palms, I think. And coconuts. But I’ve never seen any coconuts. Maybe we have to wait until after winter comes again, whenever that is.
Mom is starting to panic, so I say “let’s try over there,” pointing toward the fence nonchalantly. I know the car is there, just two rows from the fence, opposite a pair of palm trees. I don’t want her to get upset. She thinks we’re lost. I tell her that we can’t be lost if I know where we are. She wants to go back into the Sandy-eggo-zoo and get someone to help us, but she doesn’t understand that I’m helping, or I would be if she would believe me when I tell her that I know where the car is.
I was glad to see Mom when her plane landed at the Los Angeles International Airport. I hadn’t seen her for almost a year, or at least that’s what Dad said. She was surprised by how hot it is in Fullerton. She says it’s snowing in Ohio. This seems to confirm my suspicion that southern California is in the southern atmosphere.
Mom is sad every time she has to leave us to go back to her motel for the night. The first morning we went to the I Hop, which is what we call the International House of Pancakes. I don’t know what it has in common with the Los Angeles International Airport, other than that they’re both pretty big. Maybe “international” is just a big name for “big.” I didn’t see any place to eat pancakes at the Los Angeles International Airport, and there were no airplanes at the I Hop, just lots of flavors of syrup. My favorite is boysenberry, although I got sick later. Too much syrup, Mom explained to Dad, when he yelled at her about making “his boys” sick. This is how I found out that my brother and I are “his boys” now.