Free Spirits (8 page)

There are half a dozen more letters to the editor—a couple more to the Lexington paper, some to the Morgan paper. Mr. Boshears probably wrote letters to
The Wilder Herald
, too, but it’s a tiny, old-school operation and doesn’t even have a Web site.The one listing that looks truly different from the others is for a Web site called Bell Bottoms and Blue Grass: An Online Encyclopedia of the Kentucky Counterculture. “Look at that one,” I say.

The home page shows the title in rainbow tie-dye print. Underneath the title are two photos. The first shows a skinny, shirtless, grinning college-aged boy with stringy brown hair down past his shoulders and strands of beads around his neck. His index and middle fingers are held up in the peace sign. The second picture shows a much older man with thick glasses and an unruly gray beard. He’s wearing a corduroy sports jacket with a rumpled shirt and tie, and his fingers are in the same position as the young man’s. A caption under the two photos reads “The author, Dr. Harrison Branch, then and now.”

“Hmm,” Adam says. “I wonder what this old hippie’s got to do with Rick Boshears.”

“I don’t know. But I bet they’re about the same age.” I look at the table of contents for the Web site. “Communes and Countercultures by Locality,” it says. And on the fourth line down, I read Strawberry Fields, Wilder, Kentucky. I point it out to Adam and say, “Go there.”

The entry reads, “Since I was one of the founding members of the Strawberry Fields Utopian Collective, as we called it, it is difficult for me to report on Strawberry Fields with any degree of objectivity. I will try, however: Strawberry Fields was established in spring of nineteen sixty-nine just outside Wilder on a piece of farmland another founding member, Rick Boshears, had inherited from his grandparents. At its inception Strawberry Fields consisted of eighteen adult members, though as is often the case with communes, the population was fluid, with numbers swelling or dwindling on a near monthly basis.

“Strawberry Fields was conceived as a working farm with all members working equally and sharing equally in the fruits of their labors. Perhaps because nearly half of the commune had rural Appalachian roots, Strawberry Fields was more agriculturally successful than many of the Northern and West Coast farm collectives founded by urban intellectuals who were more successful in producing ideology than food. The fields of Strawberry Fields were indeed fruitful, and the commune’s members were able to live comfortably on the vegetables, eggs, chickens, and yes, strawberries they cultivated.

“The commune dissolved in nineteen seventy-five when Rick Boshears experienced a religious conversion and no longer allowed the group use of his family’s land. There was talk of acquiring a different property, but between the group’s financial limitations and some interpersonal tensions that had developed over the years, it became clear that the noble experiment known as Strawberry Fields had come to an end. Of all the living Strawberry Fields members, only three have remained in southeastern Kentucky: my wife Katherine Newell and I and Rick Boshears, who refuses to discuss his history as a founding member of the commune.”

When Adam and I look at each other, the same word comes out of our mouths: “Whoa.”

Adam clicks on the space on the Web site that reads “Contact Me.” “We’ve got to e-mail this guy,” he says. “Maybe he’ll talk to us if he thinks we’re interviewing him for a project at school.”

“Yeah,” I say, grinning. “’Cause we’re taking a class in hippie history.”

Granny sets bowls of potato-leek soup in front of Mom and me, then goes back to the stove to dip some for herself. After everybody has gotten settled and the salt has been passed, I say, “Do you all remember a farm that was around here in the late Sixties and early Seventies? A place called Strawberry Fields?”

“You mean that hippie farm out on Possum Creek Road?” Granny says, slurping her soup. “I had plumb forgot about that place. They was a gal from there that come to study with me for a spell. She was a midwife, and she wanted me to teach her what herbs to use to help women with morning sickness and to help the baby along and that kind of thing.” She crumbles some cornbread over her soup. “I can’t remember her name for the life of me, but she had a little boy about three year old. He had the prettiest curly blond hair all the way down to his shoulders. She named him Dove, the poor little booger.”

Mom smiles, her eyes growing wide. “I used to play with him, didn’t I? He was pretty…like one of those baby angels in old paintings. I had forgotten all about him, but Lord, I couldn’t have been much older than three myself!”

“You was around four and a half,” Granny says. “Old enough to be plenty bossy to a boy who was littler than you.”

Mom smiles again. “Wow. And you know, I can remember seeing some of the hippies when they came to town, too…with their long hair and tie-dyed clothes.They were pretty,I thought.” She looks down at her batik dress and laughs. “I guess they were an early fashion influence.” She looks at me. “So how did you find out about Strawberry Fields?”

I break eye contact with her, which is probably a mistake. “Uh, Adam and I were just messing around on the Internet.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then she says, “I don’t want you sniffing around that man anymore. The last time you and Adam got obsessed with righting a wrong, the wrong happened so long ago that it didn’t seem that dangerous. Now you’re not messing with the past. You’re messing with the present, and that’s much more dangerous.”

“I can feel the danger,” Granny says. “I can smell it. Don’t get so close I can taste it.”

I push my soup bowl away. Sometimes I wish it were possible to keep secrets in my family.

Anybody who doesn’t believe in survival of the fittest should go to a middle school PE class. I hate PE. It’s not that I hate exercise: I ride my bike. I walk everywhere I go, and I help Mom and Granny gardening and tending the goats. And all of that is as much exercise as anything we do in PE.

The thing I hate about PE is that everything’s a competition, and it’s not even a competition about who’s most athletic. It’s about who’s most popular. And so when the PE teacher named the team captains (Brittany and Caitlin, the most popular girls in the class) to choose teams for volleyball, Isabella and I were the two last girls to be picked.

Brittany sighed and looked at Caitlin. “Well, I guess I’ll take the witch girl if you’ll take Miss Mexico.”

If the gym teacher heard, he didn’t say anything.

Now that I’ve survived the volleyball game, though, I’m in an even worse place than the gym: the locker room. I hate changing clothes in a big crowd of girls in a small space. But what I hate even more is how those girls’ thoughts crowd my mind. As I stand in my panties and camisole, about to step into my skirt, I hear Brittany thinking, I wonder if the little witch’s mom is ever going to buy her a bra. Of course, her mom’s such a freak she probably doesn’t wear one herself.

All the popular girls wear bras even though most of them don’t need them any more than I do. That’s one of the signs of being popular: buying things you don’t need because you think you have to have them.

Isabella is changing next to me, and I hear Caitlin thinking, That Mexican girl is so fat. I bet her family doesn’t make a penny in that restaurant. She probably eats up the food before they can sell it!

“Shut up,” I whisper.

Isabella says, “What?”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking to you. It’s just my thoughts. Well, other people’s thoughts. When my body’s in a crowded space, my head gets crowded, too.”

“That must be hard,” Isabella says, sitting on the bench to put on her shoes. “I don’t think I’d want to know what people are thinking.”

“A lot of the time I don’t either, but I end up hearing anyway.” I rub my forehead. Sometimes when I get too many people’s thoughts in my brain I feel like my head’s going to pop like an overinflated balloon. “It’s worst at school because there are so many people.” I pull on my shirt and step into my sandals.

“Well, at least this is the last week of school,” Isabella says. “You can rest your brain over the summer.” She leans over and whispers, “Except when you and Adam are trying to figure out who’s messing with the restaurant. You are still trying, right?”

I shake my hair from the collar of my shirt. “We’re still trying.” I figure I’d better not tell Isabella that we already know who did it since we don’t have a speck of proof.

Once I’ve finished with all the humiliations of PE class, I go to my locker to get my books for my next class. Adam makes a beeline for me. “He e-mailed us,” he says.

“What?”

“Dr. Branch, the dude from the hippie Web site. I just checked my e-mail in the computer lab, and he wrote us back. He says we’re welcome to come by and talk to him any day after school. You think we could go tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I say, but then my excitement deflates. “Or maybe not. Mom and Granny know we’re up to something, and Granny says she smells danger.”

“There’s nothing dangerous about talking to Dr. Branch, though,” Adam says, “and my mom will drive us so we’ll have adult supervision. You could just tell your mom and granny you’re going to hang out with me a couple of hours after school tomorrow. It wouldn’t be a lie, exactly.”

I sigh. I don’t like the idea of misleading Mom and Granny, but then I think of the trusting, hopeful look on Isabella’s face when she said You are still trying, right? “Okay,” I say. “Unless Mom and Granny see right through me, which they might, we’ll go talk to him tomorrow.”

This morning as I left for school, I yelled on the way out the door, “I’m gonna hang out with Adam after school today I’ll be home in time for supper bye!” I didn’t hang around long enough for anybody to look in my mind and see the guilt and fear.

And now Mrs. So is driving us down a gravel road outside Morgan, past rusted trailers and rundown barns and fields of cows chewing their cuds. “Are you sure this is the right way?” she says.

Adam is reading the directions Dr. Branch sent him. “It says, ‘Stay on gravel road one-quarter mile until you see dirt road on right.’”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. So says, “but if it’s made of dirt, it’s not a road. A trail, maybe, or a path, but not a road.” We turn down the dirt road, raising a trail of dust. “I’m taking my car wash money out of your allowance, Mister,” she says, nudging Adam. “What class is it you’re interviewing this guy for?”

I say “history” at the same time Adam says “English.”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. So groans. “Have I accidentally ended up an accomplice in some kind of investigation?”

“Uh…maybe a little,” Adam says.

“Heaven help me,” Mrs. So says. “Well, I’ll take you to talk to this one guy, but only because we’re practically at his house already. After this, you’ll get no more help from me.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Adam says.

“You kids aren’t doing anything stupid, are you?” Mrs. So says. “You’re not in any danger?”

I see inside Adam’s head and know he’s thinking about what I said earlier—about how Granny said she could smell danger. But he says, “No, Mom. It’s perfectly safe.”

Dr. Branch lives in a two-story farmhouse with a rusty tin roof and chipped white paint. As soon as we pull up, the three hound dogs that had been napping on the porch get up to bark at us, doing their doggy duty.

As we get out of the car, a woman with long, frizzy, salt-andpepper hair comes out on the porch and shushes the dogs. She is barefoot and wearing overalls, which I guess is how people in other parts of the world think all Kentuckians dress. But to tell the truth, it’s the first pair of overalls I’ve seen in a while. “You must be the young people who wanted to talk to Harry,” she says. “I’m Katherine. Why don’t you have a seat on the porch, and I’ll let him know you’re here.”

We settle down in rocking chairs, and each hound dog picks a person to pet it. When Katherine comes back out, she’s carrying a bamboo tray full of sweating glasses. “I thought you might like to try some of my lemonade with fresh rosemary,” she says. “I’m a fanatical herb gardener so I put fresh herbs in everything.”

I take a glass and sip from it. “I like it,” I say. “The rosemary makes it kind of zippy.”

I can tell from looking at Adam’s face that he doesn’t share my opinion. But he takes another sip, like a little kid taking his medicine.

When Dr. Branch comes out on the porch, he’s wearing an old pair of cut-off jeans and a faded T-shirt with a picture of a Holstein cow on it. He grins. “Has the media arrived?”

“Yep, here they are,” Katherine says. “The pint-sized paparazzi.” She turns to Mrs. So. “If you’d like to look at my herb gardens while the kids talk to Harry, I’d be happy to give you a tour.”

“That would be lovely,” Mrs. So says, but what she’s thinking is the less I know about what these kids are getting into, the better.

After Katherine and Mrs. So wander off, Dr. Branch sits down in a rocking chair across from us. Looking at him, I can still see the young hippie from the Kentucky Counterculture Web site, even though his beard is gray and his hair has thinned. “So you kids are on some kind of hippie nostalgia trip, huh?”

“Kind of,” I say. “We’re curious about Strawberry Fields. I was really surprised to find out there’d been a commune in Wilder. Wilder just seems so…” I look for a word.

“Conservative? Conventional? Contrary to the ideals of communal living? It was…it is…all those things.” He sips his lemonade. “That’s why we never went into town unless we absolutely had to. And we always went in groups…too dangerous to go anyplace alone. And even when we’d go into town together, it never felt really safe. Too much like that scene in
Easy Rider.
” Adam’s and my faces must look blank because he adds, “It’s a movie.”