Commune Life (39)

The two men who dropped us off at the base of the commune decided they wanted to join us but failed to ask in all the many polite ways available. Instead, they started a fire at the mountain's base and set things ablaze around them while chanting their demands and expectations.

“We belong here; yes, we do! We belong here, me and you!”

The head of our community sent us down to deal with them; they were seen as our responsibility as we initially directed them to the gates. So, Dad, Cuddles, and I headed down on foot only to discover them shit-faced drunk. I don’t know what your experience dealing with drunks is, but in my experience, they are usually incapable of reason. Trying diplomacy and failing, we were about to leave to enlist the Sheriff's help when one of them - Cheech or Chong, I’m not sure which, threw Dad into the fires surrounding us.

Dad, tall at around 6’3” and with a wizardly-worthy beard, did what any intelligent person on fire would do; he dropped to the ground and started to roll, but not without a lot of yelling. Cuddles liked to carry a padlock on the end of a handkerchief that hung out of the back of his patchworked and oily pants that he called his “Smiley.” This was the day I would find out why it earned that name. Cuddles took his Smiley and raised it towards one of them, and I ran into the woods. I looked back, and the man who threw Dad into the fire no longer had a working jaw. Where there was once a jaw, now was simply blood and teeth. I couldn’t discern where his mouth began and ended. Well, that caused the other guy to give up his plight of joining our camp immediately, and he got them both into the car and started speeding down the rest of the mountain.

We headed back up the hill and reported on what we did and discovered, and we were sent promptly back down to contain the fires and follow the snow tracks to ensure the two firebugs left the area. They also wanted us far away if the cops came around looking for us after they inevitably ended up at the hospital.

The ground and trees were mainly wet, and without two drunk humans feeding it, it had gone out mostly on its own, so we headed down the hill in someone’s jeep. After no longer seeing signs of them, we went to town and bought a bowl of french fries that we shared. None of us could afford much more.

This wasn’t the best way to start our relationship with the community, but we slowly figured out our places and where we fit in. Cuddles and I were assigned the job of laying down water piping under the creek, with the theory that if it is under the stream, it won’t freeze until it entirely freezes. I didn’t question it; I wanted the work, a place to stay, and hot meals.

Meals mainly were ramen noodles and lots of them. Sometimes we’d add dehydrated veggies to the broth, which was living large. The tiny amount of money given to us by the ex-convict who drove us from the Dennys was exhausted on tobacco and fried potatoes. It was no longer economical to have rolled cigarettes, so we bought the cheapest bulk tobacco we could find and carved pipes from the trees around us. If we wanted that sweet high of nicotine, we had to work for it. Coffee was always abundant.

We were all expected to apply for food stamps and pool our stamps together as a community. I was a minor, so I couldn’t apply for them, but Cuddles was an adult, so he covered for us. We were given extra stamps that we could barter with the town folk. I inhaled it right away. Smoking while homeless is one of the simple pleasures of that situation. I can’t explain it, but I understand when you’ve got nothing and little prospect of ever getting anything; the small things get you by.

There was a young teenage girl, not much older than me, that tried to talk me into getting into prostitution. She slept with various men in our community and town in exchange for pre-rolled cigarettes, and she was kind enough to offer some to me, which I was deeply honored by, and it didn’t escape me what she did for them. I can honestly say I pondered her proposal a lot because it would have been easy physically, but mentally, I didn’t know what the cost would be. Cuddles couldn’t stand the thought, thankfully, and discouraged any idea of it. He would instead be starved than see me endure having sex to get us by.

The days of light grew shorter as winter carried on, and the cold was unbearable. I didn’t have a jacket and would wear as many layers of clothes as I could find, and if I weren’t working out in the creek, I would get into a hot sulfur pool and stay there until I shriveled up like a raisin.

One night while Cuddles and I were in a hot spring, we saw police lights coming up the road. Terrified, we stayed put and didn’t make a sound. Our compound was getting raided, and we didn’t know if it was because of how we generally made money (mushroom spores) or something potentially worse. There were many people in our commune with criminal pasts and many people of whom, to this day, I couldn’t tell you their names. They didn’t ask about us, and we didn’t ask about them.

To our surprise, we saw them put Dad in an SUV and take him away. After they left and the night grew dark and quiet, we braved getting out of the pool and ran to our trailer. A knock on our door, and then the bad news, Dad was arrested for tattooing underage minors. We thought he was finally picked up for the jaw incident, but nothing came of that. No, he went to jail for tramp stamps.

Without our patriarchal figure and only real connection to the place, I started to miss the people I knew before New Mexico terribly. I knew that my dream of hitchhiking to New York had come to an end. I called my birth mother collect, who from here out I will call Patricia/Mom, and told her that I loved her and missed her, and to my surprise, she asked me to come home. I told her I’d only return if I could bring Cuddles with me, to which she agreed.

As you can imagine, Cuddles was skeptical. He tried to talk me out of going back, but he knew that a bond with a mother was like no other, and I had to do what I had to do. I was starting to get emaciated, cold, and deeply saddened by our situation. What began as a fun adventure started to feel dire and dangerous. I had a feeling that one or both of us wouldn’t make it through the winter if we didn’t leave. I was already about to lose my mind with freezing temperatures, and it was about to dip lower. Walking to town was no longer an option, nor was pipe work. We sat in our trailer, dependent on body heat to warm it up, and constantly bathed in thermal pools. It was a way to live, but not a good one.

After several months of living off the grid and bone-chilling cold, we threw in the towel and hitched a ride with locals to Albuquerque. Unfortunately, we were dropped off somewhere urban and not near the freeway we needed to be on to get back to Arizona. We’d have to make that final trek on foot through town and cross a giant river. A lot of passages are strictly meant for cars and not pedestrians. After trying to hitch across a bridge and failing, I came up with a bunch of terrifying and dangerous hair-brained ideas of making a boat to cross and inching by on the outside of the railing so as not to be hit by cars. Eventually, knowing nightfall was coming, we kept walking near the river edge until we found a more people-tolerant bridge. Finally, we found one, and we also found a lowrider convention.