POLLY HANSEN

When I was fifteen my mother gave me permission to live on a commune in central Wisconsin for the summer. I don’t know what was going through her mind. Probably the messy divorce from my father. But she had never been one for protecting me, guiding me, or warning me about the adult world to which I was so attracted. Being a free-wheeling spirit herself, perhaps she envied my flight from the stifling suburban environment with its nosey neighbors and one upmanship. I sought an escape from not only the strait-laced suburbs but also from the upheaval my parents’ divorce created for me and my older siblings who had already fled. As well, I savored the idea of distance from a lover nearly twice my age.
          Hugo lived just five blocks from my house. He was independently wealthy, and had grown tired of me, except when he wanted sexual favors. I was sick of the way he used me and wanted to break free of him. The invitation from one of his friends, a man named Tom Baden, to join the commune felt like a godsend. I saw it as an opportunity to recreate myself and become someone I liked, and that other people might like too.
          After three hours in the back of a pickup truck, wind whipping hair in my face as Led Zeppelin’s latest hit “Stairway to Heaven” blasted from the open windows, we exited Interstate 94 just north of Baraboo. We drove along two-lane county roads past corn fields and family farms until we hit a dirt road skirting a dense forest of butternut, black walnut and oak.
          At the top of a steep hill, a mailbox painted with a rainbow announced our destination—Cosmic Farm. The truck bumped slowly around a bend past an ancient apple orchard of small, blackened trees bearing warped fruit and parked in the middle of the farmyard. A sagging faded red barn stood front and center looking like a puff of wind would send it to its knees. The one-story white farmhouse, sighing with age, rested on a slight slope just beyond the orchard. In a split-rail paddock, a chestnut horse and pinto pony huddled in a corner, their coats dusty in the bright sunshine. A few scrawny chickens pecked in long, matted grass, followed by a lone white duck that waddled after them. Two brown goats stood on their hind legs, tugging at shrubbery high above their heads, their bell collars tinkling.
          I climbed down from the back of the truck, smoothing back loose hair from my long braid. Outside the paddock, a young man wearing nothing but a pair of work boots and heavy gloves wrangled a nasty looking coil of barbed wire that came perilously close to his genitals that dangled from a dark mass of pubic hair. His tongue bulged in his cheek in concentration. I winced on his behalf. Tom followed my gaze. “That isn’t right,” he said, shaking his head.
          A young woman in cut-offs, naked from the waist up was hanging laundry at the side of the house, her breasts like soft half-moons. Okay, I could be cool with this, I thought. The previous summer my aunt had taken me and my girl cousins camping along Big Sur to some hideaway in the mountains. It was the first time meeting them. My dad’s side of the family wasn’t close, even though his brother and nieces were all the family he had. I don’t know if Aunt Sally had anticipated naked hippies but that’s what we found when we got there. She didn’t turn around and make us leave. I joined right in and went naked with everyone else. So did my cousins. Aunt Sally held out at first, but the next day I found her sunning on a huge boulder, her large breasts hanging loose.
          I followed Tom up uneven concrete slabs to an unpainted, sloping warped porch. He held open the screen door and ushered me inside. The front entrance was dominated by a cold wood-burning stove decorated with mason jars of wildflowers. A long table draped with a red and white checked oil cloth flanked by two wooden benches divided the dining area from the living room. Colorful throw pillows lined a window bench that ran along the wall beneath two windows overlooking the farmyard. An ancient upright piano stood against one wall. A stereo cabinet sat opposite in the corner, which meant that at least there was electricity. I had been warned there was no running water.
          To my right a small bedroom featured a neatly made twin bed covered with an India print bedspread. Clothes folded and stacked sat in an open cardboard box in one corner. Paperbacks, all science fiction, and books by the clairvoyant Edgar Cayce lined a bookshelf made from cinder blocks and wooden planks.
          “This is where I sleep,” said Tom. “You’re welcome to join me if you like.” He grinned and flitted his eyebrows. Tom had watched out for me at a Frank Zappa concert. Hugo had bought all the box seats in the outdoor pavilion and invited a bunch of his friends. He distributed “party favors,” a baggie of white pills containing pure LSD without the speed—virgins, he called them. All of us were tripping out of our gourds during the concert. Tom had gripped my elbow and pulled me back into an upright position when I slid out of my chair every so often. I took his invitation to share his bed as a compliment but declined the offer. I liked Tom, but not in that way.
          All four tiny bedrooms edged the living room. The next one was a dark cave that featured a loft bed. Clothes scattered on the floor suggested occupation. A third bedroom had a window at least. A rumpled sleeping bag lay on the bottom bunk. The mattress up top looked available, but the room depressed me because it was so dull and bare. The final bedroom was lovely, offering a wide view of the apple orchard. Dappled sunlight played over the queen-sized bed that took up the entire floor. A metal clothes rack stood at the foot of the bed hung with an assortment of colorful dresses that were either embroidered, appliquéd, or tie-dyed. I put down my backpack.
          Tom leaned against the doorframe, crossed his long legs and arms. “This is Corky and Nance’s room. Corky’s the owner. They’re away for a couple of weeks but help yourself to the dresses. Nance owns a boutique. She won’t mind. We share everything around here.” He winked at me. I wondered how much Hugo had told him.
          I fingered a floor-length royal blue dress with a bright yellow appliqué down the front.
          Dinner that night consisted of whatever came out of the garden—string beans, kale, mustard greens, zucchini, accompanied by a huge bowl of steaming brown rice. The residents straggled in from the woods or fields, or wherever it was they had been. There were about a dozen of us seated around the table in various stages of undress. I wore shorts and a t-shirt, not ready to bare myself quite yet. I was the youngest person there and believed that might give me special status, like being the baby of a family. Except that I wanted to prove I was no kid.
          One hefty woman named Tori, her hair and eyelashes so white I thought she might have been an albino, had enormous breasts that burst from the sides of her overalls like watermelons. I tried not to stare. Tori’s skinny boyfriend’s face was covered with acne.
          Conversation at the dinner table centered around farming. One of the local farmers needed help stacking hay bales and in exchange he’d harvest the commune’s corn since the commune didn’t own a tractor.
          “I’ll help stack,” I said.
          A guy named Theodore, tall and gangly with a scraggly reddish beard, long wispy hair and sharp, narrow teeth blinked at me like an owl from behind wire-rimmed glasses. “Thank you,” he said in a surprisingly high, squeaky voice.
          I ended up taking the empty top bunk in the dreary bedroom, and lay there in the dark, shivering with joy despite the stifling heat. I was on a commune, part of a tribe, a cool person, a real, bonafide hippie now. I hoped Hugo would see me as a worthy person again. Lately he saw me as nothing but a nuisance, except when he wanted something. By accepting Tom’s invitation to the farm, I had wanted to convince myself that I didn’t need Hugo’s approval to be valued as a person, that others might like me for who I was, not for what I could do.
          I settled into the rhythm of the commune, milked the goats in the morning, picked cucumbers which we sold to a pickling company until noon, weeded the strawberry patch and vegetable garden until it grew too hot. Every afternoon we piled into the pickup truck and drove into town to the community small lake to bathe while clothed in our shorts and t-shirts with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap as the scandalized locals looked on.
          I had been on the farm a few weeks when Corky and Nance returned from their trip. Corky was tall with a long blond ponytail. He had a clean-shaven face and a large jaw that curved like a potato chip. Nance was short and plump with long, graying hair and button-blue eyes set off by a ruddy, pockmarked complexion. For days I’d been wearing the royal blue and yellow dress. I was crossing the farmyard barefoot, avoiding chicken shit and duck poop when Nance emerged from the VW van. She approached me, looked me up and down and said, “That’s one of my favorites. Looks good on you. Make sure you wash it before returning it.”
          Tom had told me there was no personal property on the farm and that no one made rules. Nance descended on the farm with both. I never wore her dresses again. And though her rules made sense, everyone resented them because we didn’t have a family meeting to discuss the issues and vote on them like we had before those two arrived. And because Corky didn’t object to Nance’s demands, and he owned the place, and Nance was his woman, no one complained outright, but grumbled out of their earshot.
          Nance’s rules had to do with water. The first was no more drinking from the communal ladle that hung from the ceramic cistern in the kitchen. Everyone was to have his or her own mug. It made sense, but it also meant washing more dishes, which was hard enough with no running water. I was in the kitchen the morning Luke, a fierce looking, handsome, but moody guy drank straight from the ladle right in front of Nance.
          “Luke, use a mug,” she scolded.
          “Fuck!” he swore, tossing the ladle into the cistern.
          Nance fished it out and looked at me for support. “Well, honestly! It’s unsanitary.” I knew she was right but didn’t want to take her side, thinking the others would turn against me if I did. I could tell the way they held their shoulders and clenched their jaws that no one, except for one couple, liked Nance all that much. They pretended to basically because it was kind of her place. I didn’t like her all that much either. She reminded me of my mother—bossy, loud, and demanding, only my mother never insisted on rules.
          Nance also changed the dishwashing routine, though she never once washed the dishes. By her rules we had to boil both the suds water, not just heat it, and the rinse water. “I know cold water cuts the suds better than hot, but honestly, it’s unsanitary.” She stood in the kitchen waiting for the pot to boil on the electric stove, daring anyone to remove it before the water bubbled. I knew she was trying to save the farm from ruin by instigating necessary health standards, but I had just come from a home where my mother barked at us for being slobs or making toast late at night and waking her up with the smell. People grumbled, and because of our sour moods, cleaning the kitchen wasn’t fun anymore. No more singing songs and getting stoned.
          Portia and Leon, Corky and Nance’s friends, supported the new rules. These were the two power couples on the farm, and no one, except Luke that one time, dared challenge them. Not even Tom who was kind of in charge while Nance and Corky were away. Not that it was stated in so many words, but he was the one who rounded up people for the cucumber patch if they were sloughing off, and who talked with the neighboring farmers about trading in-kind jobs. He had a natural leadership others looked up to.
          The first night of the new dishwashing routine, Portia, Leon, Corky, and Nance had a foursome. I felt as if they were celebrating having conquered us peons like we were kids or something. And I was one. The rest of us sat in the living room smoking pot and pretending to listen to the stereo while they made a racket having sex. There was no door, not even a curtain. I peeked in at the tangle of arms and legs, trying to act nonchalant like everyone else was doing as if it was no big deal.
          After a couple of weeks, Corky and Nance left the farm again so she could attend to her boutique business. In their absence, we all went back to drinking out of the cistern with the communal ladle and not boiling the dish water.
          A few days later, Tom called a family meeting. We sat in the grass, passed a joint around and talked about all the ways we could improve the farm’s efficiency. Tom thought we should start keeping bees and establish a honey trade. He got some interest from others and said he’d investigate it. And then he brought up the subject of the chickens.
          “They’re a waste of money and energy,” Tom said. “They’d don’t lay eggs. They just shit everywhere. Any respectable farm would get rid of chickens that didn’t produce. I say we eat them.”
          Everyone was vegetarian, so I was surprised to see a few heads nodding in agreement.
Barbed-wire Stan, thankfully wearing cutoffs for once, was sitting in his habitual lotus position, his pale, blood-starved feet pressed tight against his thighs. “They lay eggs. I got a couple last week.”
          Theodore stroked his long, red beard. “You showed me those so-called eggs. They were the size of peanuts,” he squeaked.
          Stan shrugged. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean you should kill the chickens.”
          Tom leaned back on one elbow, chewing the end of a long blade of grass. “Why not? What’s the point of keeping them?”
          An alarmed looking Leon took his hands out of his overall pockets and sat up straight. “Those chickens serve a purpose,” he said, defensively. “They eat all the bugs. They’re scavengers. Plus, we don’t spend that much on feed.”
          “They shouldn’t cost us anything. They don’t add value to the farm,” Luke said, looking dark and foreboding. “Tom’s right. I say we cook them.” I remembered how Luke threw the ladle into the cistern and stalked out of the kitchen.
          Theodore piped up. “Yes, I believe we should enhance our diets with solid protein. The chickens could be very useful in that regard.” He pushed his wire rim glasses up his skinny nose.
          Leon looked around the circle, his eyes wide, the bald patch in his full beard revealing soft cheek. “We can’t make a decision to kill the chickens without Nance and Corky here."
          Tom slowly twirled his ankle and spoke in a heated tone. “Corky and Nance don’t make all the decisions. This is a democracy. Even Corky said so. We can’t sit around waiting for Nance to come back and vote. If she wants to be part of the farm, then she should spend more time here like we do. I say we take a vote. Who wants a chicken dinner tonight? Tori, you could use some decent protein, right?”
            Tori and her boyfriend Ken had made love under a spreading oak tree one afternoon where I was lying hidden in the tall grass. I didn’t want to embarrass them by standing up and leaving, so I stayed quiet and hoped they wouldn’t see me. When they finally left, they walked right past me. Ken startled and blushed. I didn’t like having eavesdropped. They were a nice couple. 
           Tori laughed. “Hell, yes. I’ll even pluck ‘em.”
           The chickens were pecking at the grass just a few yards away. The duck waddled behind them. More hands went up in favor of the plan. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t like the idea of killing innocent chickens but felt I couldn’t side with Stan and Leon. Stan wasn’t all that respected on the farm even though he was a hard worker. He was peculiar, meditating in the oddest places, like right in the middle of the living room floor while everyone was dancing. And Leon I liked but he was a softie with not much power. His partner, Portia, was the bossy one, like Nance, but she was also off the farm for a few days. If she had been present, I’m sure she would’ve been against it and maybe would have put up a big enough fight to prevent killing the chickens. But rather than admire her for these qualities, I saw her as haughty and aloof. 
           As people continued to debate, I decided what the hell. I’d only just become a vegetarian and used to eat chicken all the time. Besides, I was tired of stepping in their shit. And I didn’t appreciate the way Nance had reclaimed her blue and gold dress. But more than that, I wanted everybody to like me. So even though I was kind of against it, I didn’t have had the guts to say so. 
            While the deed took place, including the plucking and the cooking, I stayed far away and weeded the vegetable garden. Later I set the dinner table and picked a fresh bouquet of flowers arranging them in a vase. As I viewed the plate of glistening chicken pieces, I tried not to think that just hours ago they had been living animals strutting about the yard. The drumsticks and thighs were small; they hadn’t been very large chickens. But everyone ate them with gusto, including me once I got past my queasiness. We agreed the extra protein was good for us.
             The next day, I felt the absence of the hens and missed their clucking and scratching about the yard. The guilt was unsettling. Had they really been a nuisance, a waste of energy? We had more protein in our systems. So what? I didn’t feel any stronger. The poor lonely duck waddled about flapping its wings and walking in circles looking for its lost friends. 
            That’s when I noticed Tom eyeing it. He called another family meeting.
            We sat in the grass and passed around another joint. Tom wasted no time getting to the point. “That duck is useless. I think we should eat it.” 
            The chickens were one thing, but that cute little white duck? 
            “It belongs to Nance,” said Stan. He was no fan of Nance, but he was a devout vegetarian. 
            “What do you mean it belongs to Nance? It’s the farm’s duck,” said Tom.
            “It’s the same as the chickens,” Luke said, “useless, unless you eat it.”
            “I’ve never seen her pay attention to it,” pimply Ken said as Tori nodded in agreement.
            “No real farm has a pet duck,” said Luke, shaking his head as if he was offended by the idea.
            “She won’t even notice it’s gone,” said Tom. 
            Stan shook his head. “I think you’re wrong.” 
            I felt conflicted. I wanted to say no, leave the poor duck alone, and was tempted to side with Leon and Stan this time. The group was more divided than before. We talked back and forth about farm efficiency and added protein again. But I knew what was really going on and felt it was cowardly, talking this way when Nance wasn’t there. Why hadn’t Tom challenged her water rules when she was present if he was so angry? Why hadn’t any of us? Luke had, sort of, in a piss-assed kind of way. I knew it wasn’t so much the rules as the way she had made them without consulting any of us that bothered everyone. 
            The momentum was swinging in Tom’s favor. Should I raise my hand? I didn’t want to be left behind but hated myself for being so weak and felt like a traitor to the poor harmless, helpless duck. And what if it was true that it was Nance’s pet? But Ken was right, I’d never seen her pay any attention to it either. A mean, brutish part of me was rising to the surface, joining the froth that was bubbling at the center of our circle. I decided not to think of the duck as anything precious and lifted my hand. 
            The duck, as if sensing our murderous intentions, flapped its wings and quickly waddled away.
            I walked up the hill beyond the cucumber patch and did not help to set the table that evening, but I did come when the dinner bell rang, more out of morbid curiosity than hunger.  There sat the paltry little bird, glistening a dark brown, dwarfed by the large platter. As ten people sat around the dinner table, Tom carved off tiny pieces with animated liveliness that seemed a bit put on to me. 
            Tori was the first to hold out her plate. “Boy, I love duck. So tender.” 
            I think each of us received three mouthfuls if that. Stilted conversation petered out until we ate in silence. I heard the meat quack at me as I ground it between my teeth, and was barely able to swallow, thinking of the poor white duck that no longer existed. I had the urge to take the pieces outside and bury them in the garden. 
             Stan stared at me from across the table with hateful, accusing eyes. “I can’t believe you ate it,” he said. I had a hard time believing it myself, but there was the grease on my plate, and the carcass on the platter in the center of the table. 
            Tom put down his knife and fork and smacked his lips. “That was mighty fine.”
            “Sure was,” Tori chimed in, but the rest of us were subdued as if all we could think of was the horrible thing we’d just done. It changed the farm’s atmosphere for me. Whereas before we had been peaceful, fun-loving hippies, now we were vindictive, spiteful individuals.  I was ashamed of myself, ashamed of being weak and unable to speak up for what I believed was right. Timidity and shame were what I had hoped to conquer on the farm. I knew my relationship with Hugo was wrong not because I was too young for him, which I was, but because I couldn’t stand up to him and tell him what I wanted, couldn’t show him the real me. I believed that if I could do that, then he would see me as a valuable human being. But I was just a mouth to him, just a hand and would remain so until I learned to speak up for myself, a task at which I was failing miserably.
            The next day, Nance and Corky returned.
            Nance entered the house with her usual bustle and energy. It was raining, so all of us were indoors instead of working the fields. No one met her eyes. She looked around the room waiting for a greeting. “Wow, you guys are awfully mopey. It’s just rain for fuck’s sake. What’s wrong with everybody?” 
            Tom emerged from his bedroom, leaned against the doorframe, arms folded in his usual casual manner. “We ate your duck.”
            Nance spun around. “That’s a really sick joke, Tom.” She peered through the screen door and surveyed the farmyard. “Any of you guys seen Frieda?”
             I looked up from the book I was reading. “Who’s Frieda?” 
            “My duck,” Nance said, turning her eyes on me like blue flame. When she saw the look on my face she covered her mouth in horror. 
            “Fuck! No! You didn’t! Frieda is my pet! You didn’t eat my fucking pet!” 
             It was the worst possible moment for my nervous grin to appear, but that’s exactly what it did. It was true then. It was her duck. Tom knew it all along. 
            Nance wailed. “I think I’m going to puke.”
            Stan was meditating on the window seat in lotus position. He cracked one eye open.   “She’s  probably reincarnated already.”
            Nance burst into tears and ran to her bedroom. If there had been a door, I’m sure she would have slammed it, but there wasn’t one, so we had to watch her shake face down on the mattress.
            “You fucked up, people,” was all Corky said as he crossed the room after her. The two of them lay on the bed, Nance shaking and sobbing, Corky spooning her from behind, his arms wrapped around her. Everyone slunk from the house and went to their private hideaways while I hid in the barn in shame. 
            For days Nance didn’t speak a word but stared at us with accusing eyes. She did nothing to help around the house, didn’t clear her dishes, didn’t eat with us. None of us were kicked off the farm. There were no consequences. Just like home.
             “It’s ruined for me,” we heard Nance say to Corky days later as they lay in bed. After a while Nance returned to bossing people around, but only half-heartedly, and no one jumped to do as she said. She and Corky still fucked loudly, but Portia and Leon didn’t join them.
              I found an abandoned campsite up on the hill above the cucumber patch. Someone had strung a tarp and mosquito netting over a wooden pallet in a quiet grove of spindly aspen trees. Weeds grew inside the small fire pit, so I knew the site hadn’t been used in some time. I lugged my sleeping bag up there along with a copy of the I Ching, a canteen, and some matches and candles. In the mornings I came down to milk the goats and work the cucumber patch, then climbed back up the hill. In the evening I grabbed a hunk of bread from the kitchen, picked vegetables from the garden, and ate them raw, then returned to my lonely hilltop. 
            The sun set golden through the aspens, their leaves flapping and ticking together gently in the breeze. Standing on the hillside in the failing light, I looked down at the farmhouse, aching for connection. I had thought I was part of a healthy, caring farm family. Instead, I found the same dysfunction I’d known my entire life. I was still the loner I’d always been, unable to take a stand, looking for that elusive center, wondering if I would ever find faith in another soul, or in myself.