Chapter 1

I watched Willow get out of the car and come toward the porch where I was sitting. It had been seven long years since I had last seen her. I don't know what I was feeling, seeing her again today. The last time had been a time of bad trouble for me and I hated to think about it, much less remember. But then she came into my mind as she had been the last night I was with her.

She came to the steps and looked up at me. I could see she was wondering if I would tell her to get out of my life. I didn't. I indicated the rocker that was a few feet from me. She came up and sat down. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Then, "You've kept the place up, Bill. It looks good."

I grunted. "It gives me something to do. I got rid of the stock a couple of years ago. I decided I was working my ass off and for what? Family's all gone. Sis moved out to Idaho and has started a family of her own. I go out in the summer time to see my niece and twin nephews. Ma and Pa are out there with her. I might even go out there to live someday." I had let this roll off my tongue without looking at her.

I faced her now. "What do you want?"

"Bill, you just said you didn't have any family. What about Bill Junior? Or Sarah, for that matter? She is still your wife. At least she has never received any divorce papers."

"Not family. Sarah gave up that right to be family when she went away with you and Bert. About Junior, I don't know. I haven't seen him since he was two. He'd be nine now if I've counted his birthdays correctly."

"You have. He is smart and good looking. In fact he looks a lot like you."

"How come Sarah hasn't had any more kids?"

"I don't know how you would know she didn't. That's a story in itself, though. I'll tell you more about it sometime."

"Tough for Bert. Not what he planned, I'll bet. He was going to raise a whole tribe if I remember right."

"Yeah, that was the plan. You could have been a part of it. In fact if you had been, it would have turned out to be your tribe."

"Tough for me then. I'm still not sorry I kicked you guys out and got on with my life. Can't say as I have been very happy, but I'm still my own man. I'm not part of some crazy hippie movement."

"Say what you want, Bill. I can remember one week when you enjoyed a certain hippie."

"Yes, and for one whole week, I traded a good life for a piece of ass. That was your idea wasn't it? You were the power behind it all. It was your idea to have Sarah become one of your disciples. You took my loving wife and turned her on to smoking pot. Then you turned her on to adulterous sex and she became immediately addicted. Was it you or Bert that seduced her the first time?"

"It was Bert, but I was encouraging her to go for it. You received some of the benefits for what I did too. You got almost free labor here on the farm for a year and a half, and you got me for a short time. You could have had more, so you shouldn't complain."

"Not sure about that. I lost more than anyone. It was you who talked about the wonders of the barter system. It was cost free labor for housing, food and all that went into making a happy home. No labor in return for what was necessary. I could have hired it done for a few bucks and I would have been a lot happier these last few years. You said nothing about the sex and the taking of my wife and son. I say it was a damn poor bargain."

"Okay it didn't work out. Sarah really was pretty easy to convince. She was sick of shoveling manure and working her butt off. Bert and I took some of that off her back. We wanted to do the same for you. It took us one week to turn her, but six months to even get close to you. But then you were only willing to try it for a week and the condition you made gave you an easy out. You were a damned fool for not taking advantage of what we had to offer."

What Willow was saying, was bringing the anger back that I thought I had rid myself of. Willow Smith is four years younger than I am and Bert Smith is three years my junior. Twenty-two and twenty-three at the time we first met. They were students at a nearby college. The school was a hot-bed of change and these well-to-do students who had no idea about life, were looking to change the world. It was burn your bra and commune time, with free love and some activism thrown in.

In my mind remembering, I went back seven years and more in time before Willow. I met my wife, Sarah Burns, right after high school. We dated for a few months and were inseparable. We were a small-town product and would be working toward having a home with kids, just like our parents did. Then my number came up to join Uncle Sam in some overseas endeavors. I was drafted and I was back home in two years. Sarah and I picked up where we had left off before I was called up. I was pretty sure Sarah was true to me. At least all of our mutual friends said she was. When I reached home after the service, I went into a factory to work and Sarah worked in an office.

When we married, she became Mrs. William Loomis. For a home, we purchased an old run-down farm and were planning on having at least three kids, while we were building up the farm. Sarah was glad to stay home while I worked out and she planned on putting food by. We were raising a couple of pigs, a milk cow, a beef for slaughter, and a few chickens. Tending to these were her chores. I did the heavy work, but she was right alongside me. My job in the factory was to pay the mortgage and maybe see a movie once in awhile.

Television was an 11-inch set that we could get two channels on. In the spring of the first year of farm ownership, we borrowed enough sap buckets from a neighbor to tap out and gather sap to make maple syrup. We worked around the clock it seemed, but we did take time to make a baby. When the baby arrived, Sarah's chores fell on me when I got home from the factory. I never thought to make a complaint. This was what we both wanted and were working for.

This wasn't a modern operation. I had a twenty-five-year-old tractor. It had a loader on front to handle manure and I had a decrepit manure spreader. When the loader came off the tractor, you could bolt on a table saw that was belt driven for sawing wood. The furnace in the cellar was a beast that burned wood and a lot of it. Sarah was right there handing on the four-foot sticks for me to cut. The whole shebang set me back $357 total.

I had no haying equipment. I hired a man to cut, rake and bale the hay and I paid him twenty-one cents a bale to do it all. That was for the first cutting. For the little bit of hay I made for the second cut, I borrowed a tractor with a mower to cut grass. I put the hay loose into the barn with my pickup.

By this time, Bill Junior was four months old, and we had been on the farm almost two years. I didn't know it then and I didn't have any idea anything would go wrong when a couple of college students, named Smith, showed up at our door one Saturday afternoon. I was getting in the last of the second cutting of hay and they pitched in. The hay was in in no time. Then they said they heard that there was an old cabin up in the woods that had been used for hired help in days gone by. Could they rent it? I showed it to them.

I certainly wouldn't want to live in it. They would, even without facilities or insulation. I was ashamed to charge them anything, but I would accept some help if they would relieve Sarah of some of her chores. We struck the deal with a handshake.

They said that they were through with college at the end of the semester and would have more time to help if I needed it. They lasted in the old cabin until December. The sheet metal stove I furnished caused a fire, which was soon extinguished. I guess they weren't paying attention and it overheated. I had cautioned them about the stove, but they didn't listen. I wondered how they could be so dumb as to have the stove overheat while they were right there.

By this time we had become well acquainted and friends. We also were depending on the help they were providing with the chores. Neither kept very clean and always wore extra clothes which emitted an unwashed odor. This seemed to be standard with the hippy movement. They were no worse than others we came in contact with.

Bert and Willow Smith moved into a spare bedroom upstairs in our house. It took awhile to get the smoky smell from their belongings, but they were glad to live in a residence with facilities again. We had a great Christmas and they bought a 13-inch television and antenna for the house. We could get five channels on television with the new setup.

I came to enjoy having another young couple our age around. They were both intelligent and articulate. Our room and theirs were far enough apart, being on different floors, so we couldn't hear them, and I suppose the reverse was true. I was twenty-six and Sarah was twenty-four. Junior would be one year old in the spring.

There were some other benefits that came with having Willow and Bert living with us. Money was no object to them and we were often treated to some exotic foodstuffs or sometimes a night out to dinner. Often, if I needed a small tool or some nails, Bert would buy it and say forget about it when I offered to pay. By the time of Junior's one-year birthday, they were like brother and sister to both Sarah and me.

In the summer, Sarah and I were seeing what Willow and Bert looked like. The summer before when they first arrived, they were always discreet about what they wore and were always covered. Now they still wore clothes, but occasionally flashes of skin could be observed. And sometimes Willow bumped into or brushed against me when there was no need. If I had thought about it, I would have recognized that this was a subtle seduction. Sarah wasn't being as careful about covering herself, and I did caution and admonish her about sometimes displaying more than I thought proper.

We had a great summer and fall. Mother Earth News was championing this lifestyle we were living, as back-to-the-land people. There were other publications, books and newspapers coming into our home as well. Robert H. Rimmer's books were eagerly awaited as they came out. "The Harrad Experiment" and "The Girl From Boston" were read and discussed more than any. Nancy Friday was writing books that dealt with women and their fantasies, "My Secret Garden" being the best. John Warren Wells was another one that dealt with the sexual revolution.

Psychic healers had their following. Edgar Casey, the most honest, was written about in the book, "There is a River" by Thomas Sugrue. Ruth Montgomery had her special following as well. Sarah and the Smiths had time to read and discuss this material while I worked.

It seemed as if everyone from all walks of life were searching for someone to follow that would make their life better or more interesting--whether cult or commune. I suppose in a way I was above much of this, as I was putting in fifty hours in the factory every week. On top of that, it was I who managed everything going on at home. I have to admit, my farm was further along to where I wanted it to be. We had doubled the syrup production the second year with hardly any extra labor on my part.

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but more often than not, it was Willow and me who were paired together doing the outside chores. Willow always was the volunteer to cut or help get the wood in. She would be on one row with me in the next, weeding the garden together. She was bubbly and happy and tackled any chore with gusto. I came to depend on her nearly as much as I did my wife. Bert and Sarah did the chores around and inside the house. Sarah had always done the chores, but sometimes complained. Junior knew who his mother was, but he was just as happy cuddling with Willow and she gloried in the love he extended to her.

I know now I was too naive about several things. For months I had been smelling an unusual odor when I came home. I supposed it was incense the Smiths had a habit of lighting. I can tell you I knew from nothing about marijuana.

It was Good Friday and I had been slated to work. I did go in, but there had been a misunderstanding. I was not needed and I was on my way back home by ten o'clock. I would be home six hours earlier than my usual time.

Coming into the house, the smell I had wondered about was permeating everything and the living room was blue. Junior was running around, but I could see that he wasn't really aware of what he was doing. I looked into our bedroom and Sarah was naked in bed with Bert. I think they were too stoned at the moment to engage in sex, but I didn't doubt that it had taken place earlier.

Willow was asleep in the bedroom upstairs. That fact didn't surprise me too much as she was the one that usually did the milking and other chores in the morning. She was always up at five o'clock and when finished with the chores, she showered and went back to bed.

I blew up, getting as angry as I had ever been, and yanked Bert and Sarah from my bed and kicked them outside. I pulled a naked Willow from her bed and hustled her down the stairs and out the door to join them. I tended to Junior, putting him into my bed that was still warm.

It was cold and the wind was still blowing across the yard off the snow that hadn't melted yet. There were three naked people standing on my porch trying to get in by hammering on the door. My son was now curled in my bed, asleep or out of it. I set about opening the windows where I could, to get the stench out of the house. The back door was wide open, but those outside didn't want to walk around to the back stoop through the mud in their bare feet.

Maybe I got carried away a little, but maybe not. I floored Bert with a punch to the belly as I let them in. He lay there retching on the floor. I pointed to Sarah to head into our room. She was aware enough now to be worried.

Willow stood there in front of me with defiance. "Bill I didn't want you to find out what Bert and Sarah were doing this way, but we came to a decision this morning. We were planning on talking to you tonight but maybe we should do it now. We have been planning this awhile and we are all in agreement. I guess Bert and Sarah got carried away. Tonight we were going to explain everything to you."

"I guess you all got carried away. I suppose Sarah and Bert were going to get it on someday, just from the literature we have been reading. I honestly didn't give a thought that it could happen. She is my wife, for God's sake. I'm pissed more for Sarah not taking care of Junior. He's almost two. What would have happened if he got hurt or found some matches and started a fire? You were all stoned out of your minds. Willow, I want you and Bert out of here. I'll take care of Sarah."

"Bill, calm down. I wasn't out of my mind. I was just sleeping upstairs and wasn't aware Bert and Sarah weren't watching Junior. They must have thought he was with me and had time to make love and get happy. Know this, too. I have come to have almost as many feelings for you as Sarah has. You are a wonderful person and you must be aware how I feel about you. At least wait until you hear what we have planned."