Demon Box

We never claimed to know precisely when the birth of this New Consciousness would take place, or what assortment of potions might be required to initiate contractions, but as to the birthplace we had always taken it for granted that this shining nativity would happen here, out of the ache of an American labor.

Europe was too stiff to bring it off, Africa too primitive, China too poor. And the Russians thought they had already accomplished it. But Canada? Canada had never even been considered, except recently, by deserters of the dream. I didn’t like seeing them leave, these dreamers like brilliant and broken Heliotrope and old comrade M’kehla. These freckle-faced Huck Finns.

After his second helping of eggs Percy began to yawn and Betsy packed him away to share Quiston’s bunk. M’kehla looked wider awake than ever. He finished his coffee and announced he was ready for action. I explained the day’s plan. We had a new string of calves that needed branding and an old string of friends coming out to help. We would herd, corral, brand, barbecue, swim, and drink beer and end up at the fireworks display in Eugene at dusk.

“What we have to do now is prepare. We need to spread sawdust, buy beer, reinforce the corral to be sure it’ll keep the calves in—”

“And the goat out,” Betsy added.

M’kehla was already heading for the door. “Then let us so embark.”

We got the tractor started and the auger hooked up and holes for new posts drilled. I set the posts while M’kehla tamped them fast with stones and gathered more stones from the ditches. I had to hustle to keep up. I was glad when the first visitor showed up to give me an excuse for a break.

It was my cousin Davy, the ex-boxer. His nose was red and his eyes even redder. I asked Davy what he was doing out this early. He said it was as a matter of fact this late; he had come because in the course of a long night’s ramble he had acquired an item that he thought might interest me:

“For your Independence Day doo-dah.”

He brought it from the back seat of his banged-up Falcon station wagon, a beautiful American flag trimmed with gold braid. It was a good twenty feet long. Davy claimed to have won it in a contest during the night. He didn’t remember what kind of contest, but he recalled that the victory was decisive and glorious. I told him it was a great item; too bad I didn’t have a pole. Davy turned slowly around until he spotted a small redwood that the frost had killed the winter after I planted it.

“How about yon pole?” he drawled, then pointed at the last unposted hole where M’kehla and I were working, “in hither hole.” So the three of us felled and bucked the dead limbs off the redwood. Davy made a try at barking it with the draw knife but gave up after ten minutes. M’kehla and I deepened the augered hole by hand until it would support the height of our spar, and drug it over. We attached the hooks and pulleys and tilted the pole into the hole just as Frank Collin Dobbs and crew were arriving in his cutaway bus. In our hurry to get the flag aloft for their arrival we just tossed in dirt, promising to tamp it later. Dobbs got out just as I pulled the brilliant banner aloft. He and Davy snapped to a rigid salute. They launched into the Marine Hymn so far off key I was moved to join them.

M’kehla had chosen not to honor the ceremonies. He turned his back on the foolishness and was finishing our fencing task, reaching around the flagpole and hammering in the last section of wire.

This is when Killer made that piledriving sneak attack that started this story about verve and nerve, and the loss of it, and old friends, and strange beasts.

How came I with this awful goat? Much the same way the farm came by a lot of its animal population: the animals were donated by animal fanciers who had run out of space or patience. Our original peacocks had been abandoned by Krishnas whose ashram had been repossessed; the horses were from rock stars’ girlfriends, adrift without permanent pastures. Donkeys without gold mines, sheep without shearers, parrots without perches—they had all found their various ways to the seeming stability of our farm.

Stewart, for instance, had simply come trotting in one day, a halfgrown pup eager to enlist. Varmint-Boy was living in our swamp in an old U.S. Army tent so he decided he would act as the induction officer. He whistled the pup into his tent and shot him up with a boot-camp dose of methadrine. For hours the new recruit drilled chasing birds and fetching sticks, until the shadow grew long and the drill instructor bored. The exhausted pup lay down to sleep but of course could only stare and ponder. Pondering is hard for a dog and not necessarily healthy, but Stewart survived (though he never lost that strung-out stare) to become the top dog. The Varmint was finally drummed off the place for this and other such crimes against innocence.