1970

I lead Josey to the middle of the field.  The Gathering is calling it “Enlightenment Meadow.”  She gives me a look.  We strictly avoid these places.

“Grab a knee.”  She laughs.  It’s our little joke, transforming the ever-present hand-holding circle of love into a football huddle.

I can’t remember what I’ve told her and what I’ve left out.  So I tell her everything.

I tell her about meeting her mother.  About our life at the University, our little house, Phoebe’s studies, my teaching position.  I tell her about dropping out.  About the work commune in Alaska.  About her birth.

“Was it me that made her run away?”

“No, Josey.”

“Was it me that turned her crazy?”

The madness was always there, waiting to take her.  “It was my fault.  We left our old life because of my problems with my father, my problems with my life.  Your mother was safer in our old world.  There was structure there. There were steady friends, her family.”

I try to push away the city of tents and mini-buses.  Someone’s on a make-shift stage, playing a guitar and singing, “Why don’t we swing along the road…”

“This transient world, this traveling circus, it’s no good.  It feeds her sickness.”

“Is that why sometimes you get angry at these people?”

“Yes,” I say.  I don’t say, ‘that’s why sometimes I kill these people.’

A bearded troll is shouting from the stage.  “I hear the call!  I hear the call and I will answer it!”  The crowd comes running on their bare dirty feet.  The Magic Man is about to speak.

“We can turn around right now, Josey.  I mean it.”

“I want to meet my mother.”

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