Sun House, page 99
“As most of you know,” he began, “Lorilee, Mu, and Grady Haynes, the hero who saved Lore, are in Missoula for a follow-up procedure on her ankle surgery. Grady called early today to say it went guardedly well. I’ll also mention that, during our call, Grady made a huge donation dedicated to the long-term maintenance of our menagerie provided the purchase goes through.” There were surprised murmurs. Grady’s folk hero status kept growing. “As I turn to our chances,” Kale continued, “rather than keep repeating ‘if our purchase goes through,’ I’ll speak as if it will, and tell you why I believe this when I get there.
“But first, an inventory. Twelve thousand of NorBanCo’s twenty-two thousand acres burned to the ground, leaving them ten thousand scattered acres of unburnt land, sixteen miles of overbuilt roads, three gravel pits, a burned airstrip and heliport slowly returning to nature, two big undamaged warehouses, one large metal hay roof, and a few toolsheds now miles from any structures requiring tools. We hope to buy the warehouse near Elbow Bend and use it to expand our cottage kit business. It’s just five minutes from Aspen Swale, where we’ve agreed to site our village.
“Speaking of that village, we invite your opinions as our covenants come together. You can track all of this in Regina’s bulletins. To avoid ostentation in the Brokeback Climate Club tradition, we’ve agreed on the five sizes of cottage Eddie offers, and are firm on size of footprint, height, and the wood’s natural color. Two acres will attach to each cottage, connecting to an abundance of commons. An architect friend of Risa’s and TJ’s will be sending blueprints of how the Swale will operate in terms of water, power, plumbing, and so on. Her drawings of the village’s appearance are so stunning that my biggest concern is how little Eddie is charging for his cottages.”
“I’ll be okay, Pope,” Eddie said with a smile.
“Then on to our best news. Three thousand acres of the former McKeig and Broussard spreads are intact, all arable acres included, thanks to every hero in this room.” (The firefighters, male and female, ages fourteen to sixty, grinned at one another.)
“In the debit column,” Kale continued, “nine hundred of our hoped-for thousand acres of South Whitetail pine forest burned. But we still want it. The burn abuts our land, giving us a nice buffer from future development, and the loss of timber drops the price to near nothing. We’ll replant with larch and ponderosa, planted sparsely so our descendants can defend our forest in the future. You’ll be surprised by how fast a burn can return to life if we protect the saplings from ungulates. But what am I forgetting? Oh yeah. Regina, can you briefly explain the purpose of your email bulletins to the few of us who haven’t yet seen ’em?”
“They summarize our purchase strategies,” Regina said, “plus every aspect of the menagerie we’re putting together, and your opinions on all of that are welcome up to the deadline dates. We’re moving fast because NorBanCo, like any outlaw, wants the quickest getaway possible, and that’s good news for us. I’ve got every bulletin on file. Just ask if you need them.”
“Thanks,” Kale said. “Moving on, the Testament Creek Canyon and its big ponderosas are unscathed, a huge relief. The Elkmoon river bottom is also intact. And Stella Creek is flowing at fifty-five trout-friendly degrees past zero asphalt-cart paths and gazebo bars for conquistadors with fly-fishy pretensions. Big Salmon Pond is also in fine shape, and its name is now Ten Acre Pond, which is its size, not lame hyperbole of Tex’s. Speaking of size, on tiny flies she ties herself, Rosalia has caught two browns in Ten Acre that Eddie estimated at seven pounds each. She also refused to clobber and taxidermy them, kissing them on the nose and releasing them instead. NorBanCo responded with a press release sharply critical of Rosa’s un-American mercy upon potential wall trophies.”
Kale got a good laugh, especially from Rosalia. With emotion in his voice, he added, “Getting down to it, it’s a pleasure say that the one hundred acres of Schoolhouse Bluff and twenty round my home, barn, and buildings are intact solely because of all of you, so from here on they belong to all of you. I’ll live in an Eddie cottage. Those who’ve been in my house know my eccentric dad built long skinny hallways between each of the five bedrooms. The educators among us say that will make for excellent class or conference rooms, each out of earshot of the others. We’re abuzz with plans to teach visitors how to learn their land, switch to green energy, grow crops and livestock, safeguard forests and waters, learn the flora, fauna, and watershed, and all kinds of other good stuff.
“We’ll take a short break now. Ida wants coffee, tea, and scones in our bellies before we get down to brass tacks.”
When the circle re-formed, fortified by Ida, Kale got right to it:
“The main reason why I feel our purchase offer will be accepted is the arson trial. Cecil Danforth’s head rolled. Tex Schiller walked. NorBanCo was disgraced. Though Tex drove me nuts for a decade, his eleventh-hour truth-telling continues to serve us. An example: NorBanCo wanted Sotheby’s, the purveyor of luxury properties worldwide, to sell their Elkmoon holdings. Sotheby’s told NorBanCo to take a hike. That forced their Elkmoon rep to hire an E City realtor, Ludeman Ricks, a good friend of mine ever since he let my daughter, Marla, crash his all-boys Little League team. Ludie called me four days ago to warn that NorBanCo’s land would go on the market yesterday. That’s how we knew to gather. They’re asking eleven million dollars for the twenty-two thousand acres, eight million dollars less than they paid eleven years ago. But they’re dreaming. No offers have come in. Better yet, their rep told Ludie that NorBanCo’s wealth is about to work in our favor. All they want is to get out of the valley of their disgrace and erase the memory, and they think in billions. The four thousand acres we covet is chump change.
“In short, now is the hour to make our move. But before we do, listen. Our resources vary hugely. If you can’t afford to contribute, please don’t. For six years everybody in this room has contributed to our togetherness in ways we’ll always be grateful for.”
Gracious as Kale sounded, when he took a seat next to Ida the silence grew awkward. Planning an untested collective is one thing. Investing in it is something else again.
Leave it to Risa to change the mood. “I’ll start,” she said. “We’ve waited six years for this, and I’ve loved our cooperative ventures and look forward to many more. But I’ve run up against something I didn’t expect: the short dark days of Montana winters. Ona? Care to share what you told me when I whined to you during the January cold and dark?”
“Sure. I told Risa about a midwinter gig my band and I played at a combination barn and bioshelter near Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. No money in it, but the owners are friends, and damn did their space lift our music. Rough-hewn interior, thirty-foot ceilings with skylights, ceiling fans wafting warmth to the floor. And the plants, flowers, and summer fragrances with a blizzard blowing outside did something magical to our performance.”
“Thanks,” Risa said. “Ona’s experience seeded a notion many of you have already given a thumbs-up. When my dad died, I inherited a life insurance payout, and TJ is so generous when I work for him in Portland that I haven’t touched that nest egg. It’s 750K now. I hereby commit all of it to building us what I wanted to call the Beguine, Buddhist, and Delta Blues Barn and Bioshelter, but Kale did an intervention. We’ll just call it the B Barn, to match Kale’s A Barn, short for Animals. But to give the letter B a little more punch I’m going to paint the barn’s exterior Lorilee’s favorite indigo blue.”
Risa’s extreme generosity raised a chorus of astonished whispers and a few glances that were almost fearful. She took it all in stride. “To our daydreams of what’s coming,” she said, “switch out midwinter cabin fever for the fragrance of greens and blossoms under a ceiling so high our thoughts can soar. Imagine social nooks, meditative crannies, and a small indoor pond stocked with koi who’ll tickle Rosalia with their barbels if she kisses them. Picture a breakfast cafe menued by TJ and Regina, an indoor theatre for movies, and a huge main room for whatever we dream up: candlelit storytelling, sewing bees, lariat-tossing, fly-tying, ping-pong tournaments, yoga, and, hell yeah, Ona’s band making magic while a blizzard blows outside. The Shelburne Falls barn crew is committed to the project and drawing up plans. If our purchase comes together, construction could start this summer.”
I, the Holy Goat, am going to jump in to say that Risa didn’t just break the ice. Our infant menagerie was crowning in the form of a glorious blue barn that pushed a generosity button in everyone. The first person to respond was Ona. She’d been conspiring by email with her Wyoming novelist friend, Marchy Dark, who wanted to write a book portraying a few great musicians as their music was being conceived and track them through the ups and downs of composition, recording, early performances, and a first few tour dates. Marchy had invited the Ona Kutar Band, and Lore and Mu, to be the musicians in the book so they could market and tour their CDs and her book together.
“At that point,” Ona said, “Marchy and I had some kind of mind meld. I confessed that I was fried on recording in LA and Nashville. If our land purchase goes through, I told her, I want my next studio to be here. Beguine Records, I’ll call it, after these cool women mystics Risa has a few of us reading about.
“Marchy wrote back proposing that since the recording studio would be a big part of her book, we should both build it. ‘But I know me well enough to limit my share to forty-nine percent,’ she said, leaving me the controlling partner at fifty-one percent, so when we get in fights I’ll always win. ‘You’re the musical genius, not me,’ Marchy said.
“And here’s another idea appropriate to this community once it gets rolling. Risa’s Beguine books tell how, whenever an individual Beguine chose to leave the community, the room in which she’d lived, even if she’d paid for and built it herself, stayed with the beguinage. Risa has said this will apply to the B Barn, Kale has said the same of his former home, and I feel the same about Marchy’s and my studio. If Marchy and I move on to other projects, Beguine Records will remain where it is and belong to our ongoing circle, not us. Maybe Lore’s manager, Mu, could carry the torch for it next.”
When Mu smiled and said, “Sounds good to me,” our stalwart Pope, from his seat beside Ida, began to quake.
Ida took his arm. “Are you all right?”
“Not yet!” Kale said. “But I’m about to be. The generosity and foresight in this room has turned spectacular so fast I see I dropped the ball! I hereby add to the purchase pot the 200K I’ve been saving for, I dunno, my burial plot I guess.”
To the surprise of everyone, Ida turned on Kale with the scowl of a miffed four-star general and in her utterly un-general-like voice ordered, “Nothing doing, cowboy! You’re the one who held on here forever, giving the rest of us a chance to join you. Swear to keep your savings for your needs, and I’ll double your purchase offer to 400K here and now.”
Kale gaped at her a moment, then laughed. “I swear, Ida! I swear!”
“I want to do more too,” Ona said. “But first I have a question for Jamey.”
“I’m all ears,” he said.
“I believe you’re the reason why people keep calling us ‘an unintentional menagerie,’ not ‘an intentional community.’ I’d like to understand why this odd term is important to you.”
“It’s important, no offense anyone, because nearly all communes fail,” Jamey said. “And strong human intentions are the main reason they do. Intentionality misses the mark as soon as it leads to mental straining toward a fixed end. Monsanto, the NRA, Ayn Rand’s absurdly unimaginable fiction, Vatican edicts and so on, herd human lives into cold obedience to a manifesto with great intentionality, and look at the results. Sordid intention is so contagiously bad it’s caused good intentions to become famous for paving the road to hell.”
“Good Lord, Jamey!” Ona burst out. “What’s the antidote?”
“Paying heed to what pierces a life, not what systematizes or tyrannizes it. Being pierced leads to living by intuition, Ocean strobes, myth tellings, openness to grace, the bardic wonders in Lore’s music, brown trout kissing, susceptibility to wild creatures, conversing with birds, incredibly unlikely friendships, and other wonders. Think on our genesis, Ona. Kale says our alliance was born the day Lou Roy and Risa met up in the Glory Meadow, where Lou’s intention was a hate crime. But with Grey’s help that run-in unintentionally pierced Lou Roy, launching a friendship that soon led Lou to convince Kale to turn his schoolhouse over to Risa, enabling her to turn it into the Greater Good Headquarters in which we’re headquartering our hearts out as I speak. Lou being pierced was a holiness, Kale says to this day. And I would add that it was entirely unintentional. Wouldn’t you agree, Ona?”
“I agree enough to make a serious pledge to this menagerie,” Ona said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “But I’m attaching three intentions to my pledge because that’s the kind of selfish old cow I am, Jamey. Intention One: if Rosalia promises to master a drift boat, teach me to fly-fish, float me down the Elkmoon twice a month or so each summer, and let me pay for every float, I’m one-third committed. Intention Two: if Lou will train my young gelding, teach me how to ride him, and let me pay his going price, I’m at two-thirds. Intention Three: if Regina will continue to keep my life in order and let me pay her for it so I have time to grow you all a giant garden every year and share the bounty, I’m at three-thirds. This place is a life dream come true. If my intentions are met, I’ll match Risa’s three-quarter mil, and my loot goes entirely toward the land purchase. What do you say, threesome?”
Rosalia and Regina were stunned speechless by Ona’s offer, so Lou Roy spoke up first. “My feeling, Ona, is that our winter whitefishin’ trips are so damn fun, an’ Regina’s smoked whitefish pâté is so damn good, that the pleasure o’ teachin’ you to ride has got to be a wash. But for breakin’ in an’ trainin’ your horse I do need what I’m worth. So. Next time you an’ me go whitefishin’, the Pabst an’ maggots are on you!”
When the laughter died down, Rosalia spoke up. “I already guide Eddie in a raft I can handle fine, Ona. Ask my dad for his guide review.” Eddie gave Rosalia a double thumbs-up. “So even this summer I can guide you,” Rosa said. “But I have some selfish intentions too. You have to tow the raft and do the driving. I’m only fourteen!”
“You’re the guide for me, girl!” Ona laughed.
“My feeling,” Regina told her boss, “is that your life is in good order with or without me, and you pay me plenty for the little I do for you. So what I’d like to do come spring, if you’re willing, Ona, is help upgrade your garden to a farm big enough to feed us, and serve E City and valley residents too. If we offer CSAs and a farmers’ market we’ll get to know all kinds of neighbors we wouldn’t meet otherwise. We need fruit and vegetable PR to silence the miscreants who claim we’re a cult.”
Ona grew quiet as her eyes moved from face to face, taking us all in. Her voice then broke a little as she said, “Good humans, we have ourselves a second 750K deal and I couldn’t be happier!”
That huge act of divestment was the moment we knew the E.B.&C.Co was in the birth canal and its head was crowning. It was TJ who then delivered the baby.
“Before I contribute,” he said, “let me say a few words about my brother. Most of you have heard how, when he woke from his awful injuries and coma back in 1989, Jervis began to experience a mystery he calls Ocean. You’ve also heard how Ocean communicates through blasts of images Jervis calls ‘strobes.’ I can’t define what I haven’t experienced, but I can swear to this. In the fourteen years I’ve helped Jervis respond to strobes, they’ve led to countless deeds of so much benefit to others that my feeling has become, ‘By their fruits shall ye know them.’ So you should all know that Jervis has been strobed not once but many times that this very place and this group of people are going to help coax a way of life into being that will set an example of value to thousands. And I’d like to put my money where my trust is. Please do me the honor of covering the rest of our land purchase, whatever it turns out to be.”
After six years of waiting, our land acquisition didn’t feel real until our purchase group and Ludeman Ricks met with the NorBanCo rep the next day, found her frantic to get out of Montana, agreed on a figure in two minutes, hammered out a contract in half an hour, and ten days later the deal closed. What has our purchase of four thousand acres led to during our first thirteen years?
I keep liking the way Kale Broussard puts things. “As I’ve said for years,” he told me recently, “the demolition the Biggies call an upgrade has Mother Earth in convulsions. But here on the E.B.&C.Co, swimming against that grim tide, we’ve become a solvent, spiritually awake, dryland lifeboat housing close to fifty counting the kids, helping hundreds of neighbors, visitors, customers, and clients besides. If Earth-gentle lifeboats were to become the common social unit, could we turn enough things around to survive? I don’t know anything on a huge scale, HG. But I know this. If the Biggies’ demolition work brings it all down tomorrow, we’ll go down knowing we were the dryland mariners who never once thought Mother Earth owed us whatever we could rip out of her and we owed her nothing in return. We were the navigators who proved city and country folk, carnivores and vegans, and people of all kind of faiths can live and work together in a harmony that gets slapped now and then, but learned to minimize the sting of the slaps with forgiveness. We were a small circle of citizens who, as America’s politics went totally to hell at the end of your chronicles’ time-frame, thanked Lou Roy for warning us, ‘Don’t butt heads with buttheads. And don’t drag the head-buttin’ they call the news into our good home.’ We were the unintentional menagerie who knew grace when it pierced us, and so heeded a holy fool governed by an Ocean we could only infer by the fruits of his words and actions, revered the women among us governed by the example of mystics and all things selfless, and found more to worship in what the Roman Church and its Kings and Queens cast out or killed than in what it kept in. And we’re the ones still listening as an unseen bird, no bigger than a tiny calliope we’ll never forget, keeps telling us that the more lifeboats we can help others launch, the more folks have a shot at crossing this world storm to reach some humble little homelands safely.”
