We Need More Hippy Chicks

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“We need more hippy chicks,” said Roy, who had spent the morning explaining freedom while somebody else washed his breakfast plate.

Then she came through the doorway.

Lord, that doorway had been waiting a hundred years for somebody to use it properly. Gold vines climbed the plaster. Blue shadows gathered in the corners. She stood above us in a purple skirt big enough to hide a traveling circus, her bracelets rattling like the loose machinery of heaven.

Roy sat up.

She looked down.

“You need dish soap.”

Now there was a message the commune could understand, provided somebody put it to music.

We had seventeen guitars, three working strings, and a fellow named Cosmic Don who could explain why money was an illusion right up until you owed him five dollars. Our revolution had reached the stage where nobody would take out the garbage because nobody recognized the authority of the garbage.

She recognized it immediately.

“Something died in that bucket.”

“That’s the compost,” Don told her.

“Then bury it.”

Her name was June. She could rebuild a carburetor, sew a coat out of curtains, and hear a lie before its owner had finished dressing it. All those little coins on her vest flashed when she laughed. Looking up from my mattress, I had the peculiar feeling that an entire cathedral had stepped outside for a cigarette.

Roy began explaining his vision.

June listened while tightening a loose screw on the kitchen chair. He spoke of communal harmony. He spoke of masculine and feminine energies. He reached the part about everybody contributing according to their nature.

“Good,” she said, handing him the screwdriver.

He studied it. A small metal crisis.

By sundown she had the bus running.

We heard it cough behind the house, then roar, then settle into that tremendous old animal breathing. Everybody came out carrying something: blankets, oranges, a saucepan, Don’s private stash of supposedly imaginary money.

June sat at the wheel. Gold earrings swung beside her jaw. Her skirt spilled over the seat in purple rivers, and the evening light caught her bracelets so bright you could have navigated by them.

Roy climbed aboard.

“We need more hippy chicks,” he announced again, encouraged by the engine.

June handed him a sack.

“Pick up the trash first.”

And damned if he didn’t.

We waited while he crossed the yard, stooping after beer cans. For once nobody offered a theory. The motor throbbed. June leaned out the window and watched him with a grin.

When he finally boarded, she opened the throttle, and all our loose possessions slid six inches toward the past.